Monthly Archives: September 2008

Web Hosting asked:


In web hosting world there are many interesting events that take place. For a beginner it’s quite difficult to segregate between two hosting companies as all look alike in the beginning the difference is only found out afterwards when he/she gets shut down without warning.

The problem faced by beginners now a day is how to rely on a web host review when thousands are there. It is really impossible for anyone to review the thousands of web host out there, but it is in one’s favour if the user bases his/her web host review on high in demand providers. It is a fact that there are many top marketers having their own server, and one can’t afford to pay $200 or more monthly for one’s own server.

In this article we are going to discuss on the things which are helpful in preventing web host shut down and the ways by which one can learn how to use the forums to find recommendation for choosing a right web hosting provider.

For a beginner it is really difficult to digest that even the forums given are not very helpful. These forums are posted by people who are not having any good experience by the company.

Following are the four tips one should follow to get a good web host review:

1) Say no to unlimited domain names: One should always keep in mind not to go for unlimited domain names. Whenever a user creates a new account a provider automatically divide up his/her hosting bandwidth, it means that if one is just having 40 Gigs of bandwidth and he/she opts to divide it up by four domain names, in that case he/she must have used up all his/her bandwidth. Thus addition in any domain name will exceed the bandwidth as well. This is the policy adopted by cheap web hosting providers. By this way cheap hosting providers charges unlimited for extra bandwidth and user has to pay as he/she is not having any other choice. Thus one needs to be very careful regarding this matter.

2) Say yes to monthly payments: It is quite often that web hosting providers offer cheap prices in case user is making yearly payment. However in that case user will be in great loss as after paying the yearly amount he/she has already tied up with the company and now they will provide the services which are just useless and user have to accept it. Thus one should go with a company that is offering quarterly or monthly payment plan with money back guarantee.

3) First test by sending email: One should first test by sending a simple introductory email to check the response time. The response time of the host provider will tell everything about his/her services.

4) Ask for refund: One should always keep all the receipts safely and at any time if his/her site gets shut down, he/she should ask for refund from the provider if the payment is paid in advance. One should immediately file the complaint and should do all to get valuable money back.

Thus after keeping all the above 4 points in mind one will surely know how to get rid of problems and will safe his/her valuable money.



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Web Hosting asked:


One should consider the given below web hosting mistakes and should restrict them from having a seriously negative impact on his/her website.

Mistakes and solutions:

1. Contact Information

One should make sure that his/her web host has contact information available to user 24 hours / day and 7 days / week. This facility provided to the user should be in the form of phone numbers plus e-mail addresses that correspond to the web host domain name. The user should make sure that he/she is dealing with a real company that not only concern about there own business but also of user’s.

2. Excess Bandwidth

It is a serious problem faced by the user that while using a free or cheap quality web host there are more chances that he/she do not possess sufficient amount of bandwidth which could cause problems with user’s website in the later time. Even in the condition when user has to pay a little bit more amount of bucks, it is worth to gain further bandwidth. The user should inquire about this before signing up with a web host.

3. Liberal Disk Space

Several times it happens that user is in false happiness for finding a cheap or free web host and just signs up without even inquiring about the quantity of disk space they provide. A user should ask just one question to him/her, what he/she will do in circumstance when the disk space fills up? One should confirm that his/her host provides him/her liberal amount of disk space or not, if not one should look for an alternative (web host).

4. Web Host Domain Name

One should confirm that the company domain name that it matches with the web host company name or not prior to disclosing his/her credit card information or rather say hosting his/her website with them. On the Internet it is up to the user to choose whether a company is genuine or not, one should verify the domain and company name to locate a combination between them to sustain.

5. Protection

Inspite of the web host and website design, the user must ensure that he/she have secure websites for purchases where people will enter the banking or credit card information. There is no argument on the fact that, if one’s site does not appear to be secure, customers will definitely leave. One must get rid of such circumstances and must go to an extent of the limit to make customers feel secure and convinced buying from his/her own site.

6. Strategy Ahead

One should be prepared for the future and should give a thought in his/her mind about the websites growth. In absence of proper strategy one has to face some severe challenges if one outgrow his/her website, shopping cart, bandwidth etc too quickly. One should adopt a systematic plan for slow, medium, as well as fast growth so that one can remain aware about how to tackle challenges in every sort of situation.

7. Sluggish Server

One should confirm that his/her web page loads within 10 sec. for a 56 k modem. If not, then people will prefer to desert one’s site before the page ever opens rather than waiting. The reason behind it is that, people are looking for instant gratification on the Internet. How to provide information is user’s headache, if cannot the people (customer) will leave on the spot. There is no matter to compromise.

8. Blueprint

One should confirm that his/her host should permit him/her to design the site for ultimate success. Presence of too many policies or regulations regarding the site design will probably influence the sales and the way customers perceive one’s site then should look for another host. There is no scarcity of choices.

9. Checkout

One should prevent several formalities in the checkout process and should ensure that it should be in clear, simple, and to the point format. People prefer to buy their products without giving one a lump of private information. Let the customer do that or plainly make certain fields optional if one is attempting to carry out market research.

10. URL

If one wishes for an ideal reflection of one’s business and services he/she should possess own personal URL. One should not use a free host that provides him/her some kind of space using their URL with some further information at the end of the URL that directs it to him/her. There is no harm in loosing some of the bucks and getting one’s own URL that is unique, simple to process, and says something about one’s company. No doubt, it is going to be most crucial.



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Web Hosting asked:


The one who wants to enter in this web world and desires for a long time survival, then he/she should be familiar with each and every terminology used in this field. If user considers all the important factors before choosing a hosting plan then only he/she will be able to have a successful future in this world .User should not choose any of the plan, rather he/she should opt the best and most suitable one and this can only be made possible by fetching more and more informations and also by studying properly all the requirements. New comers should start from the basics .They should learn the meaning of each and every term used and also in addition those factors that can affect his/her selection.

Web Host

Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as ‘web server’. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.

The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.

There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:

1. Free Hosts:

The users who are not professional but are making website only as a hobby then for them free hosting can be a good option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the user’s domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.

2. Shared Hosts:

The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility. No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.

3. Dedicated Hosts:

The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to create as many websites as they like. Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.

4. Collocated Hosts:

Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.

5. Reseller Hosts:

In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.

6. Other Hosts:

Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.

Domain Name

Domain name is the name which shows the place where one’s website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is easier than recalling the IP addresses.

Space / Storage

Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very important role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases. Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month can be easily available.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who don’t want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.

Server Type

Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.

Databases

As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.

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Server Side Scripting

Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmaster’s requirements. However PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.

Email

Now the next very important aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can move further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is planning to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts totally depends on the hosting plan one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as big plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.

Control Panel

Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some important functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.

Uptime

Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with excellent features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will think twice before visiting it. In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very important feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.

Price

Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a great variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices ranging from 0 to $1000 per month. For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterwards.



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Web Hosting asked:


What can be the best advantage of a web hosting reseller? It is that one can gain few additional bucks’ collateral to web hosting. One can even make it as a full time source. Few of the web hosting resellers delivers a very good amount.

Selecting a correct Reseller web hosting:

It is not if one look for a web hosting reseller according to his/her requirement. One should search for a hosting reseller one whom one can rely upon, delivering excellent customer support. A good web hosting reseller provides all the necessary tools that are required for a successful website which helps in boosting one’s business.

What one would understand by the term Reseller Web Hosting?

A reseller will get a reseller hosting account through Reseller web hosting which later resell space and bandwidth to his/her own clients. This type of service demands a lump of space and bandwidth.

What the term Web Hosting Reseller denotes?

It refers to a person or a company that acts like an agent to resell the products and services related to hosting companies. Such a reseller can receive commissions and/or discounts from the respective web hosting Reseller Company. These resellers even get the right to build their own custom web reseller accounts for the purpose of re-sell the product to their respective customers.

One should know that to deal with a reseller web hosting company, he/she has to sacrifice some of the rights. One should need to ensure that he/she may not have to counter with the trouble of downtime. If this problem arises one may loose the link of crucial emails and/or sales coming through valuable clients.

If the quest ends on a right selection one can achieve heights in the reseller web hosting service sector. One can provide hosting service to the customers and conclude web site building at the same time. That’s the reason one should hunt for a web hosting company that puts the option of multiple hosting accounts along with their web hosting reseller services. After that, a web creator can involve in the hosting services of their client’s sites directly from their own respective reseller web hosting account.

One should verify carefully the recommendations of all clients as well as reference sites before finalizing a reseller web host. One can even ask from the users who are using the services of web reseller hosting companies.

Last but not the least; one should also look if all the important features and services are available that one can offer to attract his/her customers. Thus these all are necessary things which one should consider while selecting a quality web hosting reseller.



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Web Hosting asked:


Looking at the cost involved ranging from $150 – $1000 per month why is that dedicated web hosting such a huge punch on the business web hosting market? Is paid web hosting worth it?

Now what is dedicated web hosting? Dedicated web hosting is having one single server rented to a single customer by the webhosting provider. Virtual dedicated servers and co-location web hosting are two similar solutions relatively familiar in the web hosting industry. In virtual dedicated server hosting plans one does not get an entire computer just for oneself this means that the virtual server shares the resources of a web server computer with other customers of the web hosting provider. There are many similarities between both Co-locating web hosting and virtual dedicated servers but the main difference is that, in co-locating web hosting the customer owns the web server computer and web-hosting provider only houses the web server computer and sells bandwidth to the customer whereas in dedicated web hosting the web server computer belongs to the web-hosting provider and is only rented by the customer.

When single web server is rented to a single customer it is called real dedicated web hosting.

For businesses that work with high traffic, dedicated web hosting is the idyllic way out. Application required for its operation and functionalities of web site falls under ones specific control.

There are many advantages of dedicated webhosting:

• Concerns regarding the maintenance, the security, and the reliability of ones web server are all handled by hosting provider.

• One doesn’t have to bother about maintaining the hardware and the connectivity of the computer as it is on rent and not been purchased

• One is freed from replacing the component or solving the problem, as everything is provider’s responsibility

• One gets compensations as part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) by most o f the web hosting providers.

• In the occurrence of failure one may get reimbursement with the cost of ones hosting plan for a month or a fraction of it, depending upon the severity of the failure.

• When compared to having to pay for the component and for the technical support required for actually replacing the component, while web site in not online all these advantages seems quiet good as at the day end one will just be paying for functional hardware.

Imagine the business with all the resources being saved on the above maintenance issues. One can choose between “managed” or “unmanaged” service levels as the costs of administering and maintaining the web server one has taken on rent will vary depending upon the web hosting provider.

One can choose “managed” dedicated hosting which means one will have access to “control panel” if one is uncomfortable with the technical expertise required by the management of a web server computer. All the essential tasks required to be performed by the proper functioning of ones web server via a simply point-and-click user-friendly interface are allowed by control panel.

This way one can setup, administer and maintain all the web sites on web server without knowing or typing any command lines nor having any in depth knowledge of the operating system.

Those with great degree of technical expertise in mastering a root access to the server can go for “unmanaged” option. “Unmanaged” option offers complete server administration, thus having possibility of configuring every service on the web server. But if necessary services are not configured properly it may result in failure of system. Due to these reasons unmanaged dedicated hosting is recommended for only people having solid server administration background or for web developers who require custom applications for their web sites, or a customized environment. Thus people having dedicated server computer’s stability will not be prone to the plagues affecting shared web hosting solutions.

Imagine-

-errors in programming usually made by the beginners,

- Or overload i.e. server being crowded with applications and components required by the other customers

- Or in a shared web server when the processor time and the installed memory are both shared by the software applications needed by the other users.

Instant support is provided to its customers when required by the dedicated web hosting whether managed or unmanaged which is not possible on a shared hosting plans where one will be facing delays and possible additional technical support fees.

If one is having prompt support service from ones side then the customers will be happy and at the same time there will be growth in business. For those doing business in web designing advantage to have his own dedicated server is priceless not because he will be able to offer pure hosting services, but because he will able to offer them packaged with the web design activity also. When one is having access to web server for 24 hours, then within minutes one can modify a website for a customer or upload a new one.

If complete web presence solution, design and hosting, is offered by the studio to a customer there is chance of that customer being regular this is an added advantage.

The benefits of a good dedicated web hosting are:-

• Businesses solutions being translated into sales growth

• Better customer relationship results to improved company image

• Reduced cost compared with in-house web hosting solution, and so on.

• One can run a better business and better business gives good profit.



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