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UNCP begins Internet
hosting service
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Sylvia
Pate
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Reggie
Oxendine
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UNC Pembroke's Regional
Center for Economic, Community and Professional Development is offering
Internet services for businesses, governments and individuals.
A little over a
year ago, the Regional Center created www.uncpembroke.net
to build and to maintain Web sites for a variety of clients.
The Robeson County
Board of Commissioners, the Lumberton Area Chamber of Commerce, a hardware
store, a doctor's office, a world-class strongman and a gospel group
are customers of the new service.
The Regional Center
saw a need for small business development through the Internet, but
no local company offered the service. With Fayetteville-based Web hosting
company Advanced Internet Technologies, Inc., (AIT) as a partner, the
new service got started, said Regional Center Director Sylvia Pate.
"The idea began
with a workshop we offered on e-commerce, which is doing business and
marketing on the Internet," Pate said. "We found that there
was no local company to put small businesses on the Web."
"We are filling
that void by offering this service," Pate said. "Web hosting
is now a valuable and growing part of our outreach mission into the
communities we serve."
Reggie Oxendine,
a UNCP computing consultant, is heading up www.uncpembroke.net.
"Our service
of designing, hosting and maintaining Web sites is in the start-up phase,"
Oxendine said. "It is going smoothly, and interest is picking up."
Getting a business
started on the Web is easy and affordable, Oxendine said.
For a small Web
site (5-6 pages) with low maintenance and 10 email accounts, customers
can be on the Internet in about three weeks at a cost of $25 a month.
The cost to add "shopping carts" and other business transactions
is additional.
"We will also
apply for an Internet name and submit the Web site to the leading search
engines," Oxendine said.
For Robeson County,
which had an aging Web site, www.uncpembroke.net
expanded and upgraded the site, Pate said.
"We got a small
grant to broaden the scope of their Web site with the goal of conducting
some online transactions, such as downloading forms," Pate said.
The Regional Center's
new Web hosting service is poised to take off, Pate said.
To learn more about
UNCP's Web hosting service, call 910.522.8410 or go to www.uncpembroke.net.
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