10 Sneaky Tricks of Cheap Web Hosting Companies
If you thought all those billions of web pages are hosted on expensive and full service web hosting companies, you need to cross check your information sources again. Of course, there are free or cheap web hosting companies that provide basic features good enough for simple html pages. You can take the example of some blog sites for these. But cheap (as cheap as $1.99 a month) web hosting service is different as they claim to provide more than the basic features which require huge infrastructures and funds to maintain and remain in the business. How do cheap web hosting companies attract business and what are their tricks?
Trick Number 1: The 24/7 toll-free number that a cheap web hosting company will advertise on their website. Most of these rarely work and those that do work seem to work only Monday to Friday. They are there mainly to create a false impression. What will you do on the weekend or after hours? You need a web hosting company that provides real support.
Trick Number 2: E-mail contacts given, which give you a very nicely worded (auto responder) response, requesting you to be patient while promising that an appropriate web hosting executive is handling your query. Don't you want to talk to a real person at some point? Email messages could go on forever with no resolution in sight. Your time, in short supply, is valuable.
Trick Number 3: Unlimited emails in POP3 and SMTP which hardly give any value to a small webmaster but can have a big impact on your decision making. Cheap web hosting companies cannot provide good email service. Yet, you need good email service so that you can stay in contact with your customers. (better service=more customers=more sales)
Trick Number 4: Cheap web hosting companies often make promises of free downloads worth thousands of dollars. You can check this offer only after you subscribe to their service. You should be able to check out all aspects of an offer before making a commitment, thus saving you valuable time and money.
Trick Number 5: The lure of freebies like all platform database support, preinstalled server side scripts, site builders, templates and SSL & ecommerce tools. In actuality, if these products are provided by cheap web hosting companies, they are very limited. Why limit your business from the start? You need a web hosting company that will give you the tools you need to be successful right out of the gate!
Trick Number 6: Domain registrars and sister companies of cheap web hosting companies don't allow editing DNS zone files and MX records. Registrars talk about "name server management" when they actually mean the exact opposite resulting in forced hosting with them. You should be able to choose the services that you want for your business. After all, who knows your business better than you? Locking yourself in with a cheap web hosting company forces you to do business their way. Don't do it!
Trick Number 7: Artificially populating user forums is another way of promoting their cheap web hosting business. Cheap web hosting companies do this so you will think they have tons of satisfied users. Really, you should rely on referrals to check out a web hosting company's services. This is the only real way to be sure you'll get the service you deserve. Trick Number 8: Display of an unknown or little known award and trying to impress you that they provide award winning service. Do awards mean anything anymore these days? Better to rely on actual comments from real customers.
Trick Number 9: Offering free integration of shopping carts and payment gateways. Cheap web hosting companies do this because they know that for many online businesses having access to an online payment tool is a must. What you actually get is PayPal, which is well known, and is not their product at all. Why would you trust a web hosting company that would do this?
Trick Number 10: Free Marketing support. Of course they do it but what they market vigorously is their site where your name might be mentioned. Cheap web hosting companies will not do more than this. In fact, they cannot. Are you paying for marketing your business? Or theirs?
Being on the lookout for tricks such as these will keep you from falling into the trap of thinking that cheap web hosting is good. You can make a better choice for your business. You need a web hosting company that provides real, complete services that help improve your business. Do you want your business to be just a number?
Remember the old adage, "you get what you pay for".
Front Page Web Hosting - 10 Questions to Ask
In your quest for choosing a front page web hosting company, you want to ensure that the company has the basics, such as reliability. You also need to consider the technical aspects of front page web hosting and the obligations of your web host; both are essential if you want to avoid future problems. Technical trouble is the last thing you need, especially when your company is a startup. You should ask questions freely to gain confidence in any front page web hosting company that you are considering.
Top 10 Questions To Ask Your Front Page Web Hosting Company
1. How good and reliable is the customer support? 24/7 support is a must. Also, if the front page web hosting company has a large knowledgebase, do you know how to use it? Is the support staff responsive? Are they trained or do they pass the buck to someone else? Does the front page web hosting company provide live chat support (practically a necessity these days)?
2. How will you justify the price? Loads of features in a front page web hosting company may not be useful to you until you use them. How will you factor in bandwidth cost? Is the ratio of price to features, disc space and bandwidth the reasonable?
3. How will you ensure accuracy of automatic billing? Some front page web hosting companies have servers that trigger automatic billing even after you cancel your account with them. Do they confirm the stoppage of automatic billing when you cancel your account?
4. How long has the front page web hosting company been in business? This reveals many things. Trustworthiness, sustainability, technical know-how, strong marketing and business acumen. Ask for a list of long standing customers.
5. Do you have a sufficient back-up system? It is difficult to manage 99.9% uptime without sufficient backup system for servers and connections. A standby power supply is another important feature of a reliable front page web hosting company.
6. How good are the features? Ask for a feature-by-feature comparison with another front page web hosting company. Compare control panel to control panel, disc space to disc space etc, not just a list of features.
7. How good is the technical staff? It is not enough to have numbers; what counts is the hands-on experience of the front page web hosting staff. An experienced technician gets things done instead of wandering around in the dark.
8. Is the package flexible? The package you choose may need expansion as you grow. Will the host be able to provide additional features when you need them? Shifting your website to another host when business is hot is crazy. You don't want to be forced into doing this!
9. Why is there so much fine print? Too much fine print should raise red flags as to services provided and promises made. Clarify them upfront and let them know that you have other front page web hosting companies to choose from.
10. Does the web host run their own servers, or does a third party run them? If it is the latter, you have lost ground even before the battle has started. Many things won't be under your host's control if it is a reseller.
There is more to choosing a front page web hosting company than just asking 10 questions. However, these should serve as a base for beginning your evaluation of a front page web hosting company. You can and should send a pre-sales questionnaire to your web host asking about billing issues, technical issues etc. Keep the responses so that you have a written record of what they promise you. If there is no reply, you need to move on!
Choosing A Reliable Colocation Facility
There are no industry standards to designate a good colocation facility, but key areas can help identify one: power, cooling, Internet connection, and service. Good colocation facilities offer reliability through redundancy, maintenance, and service, meaning more uptime for networks and longer equipment lifetimes. Ask questions, be prepared to research answers, and look for the facility that meets the needs of their customers.
Power A good colocation facility will have a power system with backup units not only for the generator, but also the universal power supplies (UPS) and transfer switches or circuit breakers.
UPSs run the servers while power switches from regular electricity to generators. Regardless of quality, UPSs fail regularly, so facilities must have multiple UPSs running sufficiently below capacity to manage the total server load if one fails. Transfer switches or circuit breakers switch power to the generators.
Circuit breakers are more dependable than transfer switches, but it is important to have a backup for either system so that power can be transferred regardless of equipment failure.
As the primary source of power during an outage, the generator must be large enough to handle 1.5 times the total building load. If there are multiple generators, the colocation facility must be able to transfer the load between generators, otherwise a failure could disable all generators.
Cooling An overlooked consideration for uptime and equipment maintenance is cooling. All servers generate heat yet are designed to operate at room temperature, between 72°F and 76°F. Computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units, chillers, and facility layout ensure that all servers receive adequate cooling. High-end colocation facilities regularly maintain cooling systems and monitor temperature, humidity, and power usage for optimum server performance.
Chillers pipe cooled fluids to the CRAC units. There must be redundant pumps and chillers which automatically take over in case of failure so that the CRAC units continue to operate.
CRAC units are large (20 to 30 tons), specialized air conditioners which constantly blow cold air. The minimum number of CRAC units to cool a facility is .030 tons per square foot. If there are four 30-ton units and the facility is 4,000 square feet, then there are .030 tons per square foot (120 tons ÷ 4000 square feet).
The facility layout should have designated hot and cold rows. Server fans blow hot air from the back of the servers into hot rows; the CRAC units blow cold air down cold rows across the front of the servers. Solid floor facilities should have return vents on one side of the room to draw hot air from the servers, and cold air vents in the ceiling blowing down the top of the server racks. Raised floor designs should blow the cold air with enough pressure to force air to the top of the racks.
Internet Connection There are two major types of Internet connection.
Tier 1 providers create national networks which are dependable and fast but tend to have high latency and poor out-of-network performance.
Tier 2 companies buy access from multiple tier 1 networks, so they have speed and dependability combined with better latency and performance from a wider network. Some tier 2 providers offer performance routing to route traffic more efficiently between networks, boosting network performance by 50% and creating a self-healing network.
Service A quality colocation facility offers extra service, including any of the following:
A dedicated, 24-hour customer service line, plus onsite engineers for emergencies.
Changing backup tapes and storing them in a fire-proof safe.
Crash carts with monitors, keyboards, and other tools available when a computer crashes.
Structural designs to withstand earthquakes, storms, and floods.
Tour of the colocation facility, take notes and ask questions about their systems, backup systems, and maintenance, and find the facility with the service, access, and quality care to give your business reliable, dependable network.
Virtual Dedicated Hosting - The Best of Both Worlds
In order to appreciate the beauty of Virtual Dedicated Hosting, it helps to understand the alternatives - "shared" web hosting and “real” dedicated hosting.
Shared Hosting - Cheap But Potentially Unreliable
Shared web hosting makes it possible for hundreds or even thousands of users to host their sites very cost-effectively. However, there are a few drawbacks.
Because many web sites are hosted on the same physical server each site must share that server’s resources. These resources include bandwidth, disk space, memory, and CPU usage to name a few. The need to share resources is rarely a problem for small and medium size web sites.
The biggest limitation with shared hosting, therefore, is that you cannot control any of the system-level software such as mail servers, http servers, etc. You also are not able to choose your own operating system, compile programs, or perform other administrative activities such as installing firewalls and spam filters.
Real Dedicated Hosting
Real dedicated web hosting, on the other hand, solves all the problems with shared web hosting, but at a significant cost. With real dedicated hosting you have exclusive use of an entire server: all the memory, all the disk space, all the CPU horsepower.
Therefore, no other web sites’ problems, glitches, or whatever, will have any effect on your web site. You have total control over the server, its resources, and its administrative functions.
This is the ideal web hosting solution but it isn’t cheap. You have to pay for an entire server with no one else to share common expenses. So, typically, a “real” dedicated hosting plan will cost a minimum of $100 per month and goes up from there. And, unless you opt for managed hosting which is even more expensive, you have to do all the technical server administration yourself.
You run your business. I’ll run mine.
The fact is that most web site owners don’t need total control of their servers as they simply want to run their businesses. They have neither the interest nor the ability to perform all the technical tasks associated with a fully dedicated server and are more than happy to let their shared web hosting provider handle them.
However, when an online business begins to ramp up its transaction volumes, expand its product line to a large number of online offerings, or simply needs more control over its environment, there is a very cost effective alternative to a fully dedicated server.
Virtual dedicated hosting, also known as virtual dedicated server, or VDS, hosting, is the term for a physical server which, by means of software, has been partitioned into a number of virtual machines operating independently of each other as if they were standalone dedicated servers.
Virtual Dedicated Hosting - Advantages
The big advantage of VDS over a fully dedicated server is cost. Typically priced at less than one fourth the cost of full dedicated hosting, VDS hosting provides nearly all the same advantages. And compared to a shared web hosting plan, VDS is only slightly more expensive providing an excellent balance of economy and control.
With a VDS all physical resources such as memory, disk space, and the CPU continue to be shared, but each virtual server operates in a fully independent manner. For example, each VDS can run its own unique operating system and can be set up in any configuration imaginable.
The main advantage of a VDS is that each administrator maintains control at the root directory level of his or her own virtual server. Access at this level permits the web site owners to do a lot of neat things:
Administer their own file directories
Assign domain names that resolve to a primary domain
without having to go through the web host
Create and add e-mail accounts
Assign email addresses
Manage their own log files
Maintain passwords
Set permissions
Delete and install software
VDS administrators effectively have the ability to do whatever an administrator can do on a real, physical server.
Security
Besides providing significantly greater control over the web hosting environment, the virtual dedicated server hosting is inherently more secure than any shared hosting server can be. Because web sites hosted on a shared server have to use the same operating system, a hacker who gets access to the server’s root directory could damage all the websites residing on that server.
On the other hand, a VDS is compartmentalized such that a hacker gaining entry via one account could in no way access any of the others. Each VDS is totally invisible to each other and it’s impossible to transfer root-level access capability from one account to another.
Virtual Dedicated Servers can be configured by the hosting company in a variety of ways so it’s important that you understand how your web host has allocated the server’s resources.
Typically the host would distribute the physical server resources evenly based on how many accounts and/or web sites are being hosted. Thus, with ten virtual servers on one physical server, each would be allocated ten percent of the storage, bandwidth, memory, and CPU time.
Virtual Dedicated Hosting - Disadvantages
Interestingly, the disadvantages of hosting on a VDS are pretty much the same as what the advantages are. If you’re not sure what you are doing, having the full control that virtual dedicated hosting allows can be very risky.
For example, you can accidentally delete files, or set permissions inappropriately, or allow viruses and other malware to enter the system and, overall, just make a real mess of things. So if you lack the technical skills to administer a web server, and are unable or unwilling to learn them, virtual dedicated hosting may not be a good choice for you.
However, if your site has reached a size where shared web hosting no longer accommodate the demands of your business, virtual dedicated hosting can provide a highly cost-effective alternative to “real” dedicated server hosting.
The Bottom Line
When selecting a virtual dedicated hosting plan, make it your business to understand how all the server resources are allocated, what the available options are for operating systems, how many VDS accounts will reside on each server, as well as the terms and conditions for upgrading and downgrading to a different plan.
Linux vs Windows in Web Hosting Services
Although advancements made in recent years towards the overall development of the web hosting industry has brought Linux and Windows hosting features much closer together, the reality is that there's still a lot to consider for today's webmaster when choosing what type of web host to use.
How Windows and Linux Work
For those unfamiliar with Windows and/or Linux, it's only fair that I provide some groundwork – so to you experts, or people who just don't care, you can skip ahead now.
In many ways, Linux and Windows are very similar. When used for web hosting, both services will interface just fine with anyone's home computer, whether they're running Windows, Linux, Apple's OS X, or just about anything else.
Despite this, some fundamental differences can't be ignored. Windows and all of its major software is developed by one company (Microsoft), which are virtually all dependent on one common core (or 'kernal'). This type of interdependence between the various parts of the server is what's called a 'monolithic' design. On a Windows home computer, examples of this sort of approach can be seen in Windows Media Player and Microsoft Internet Explorer. A Windows server typically runs webpage serving software known as IIS, which is actually integrated right into Windows too. Although the alternative Apache software that's standard on Linux servers is also available to Windows administrators, it's very uncommon that it's ever used.
This is where Linux is very different. Linux has been developed completely by what's known as the open source community – a collective effort by any talented programmer who's willing to pick up the existing Linux source code to try to improve upon it in some way. This group-oriented approach has created the perfect compliment to the monopolistic approach of Microsoft by creating an operating system made up of parts that are freely independent of one and other – a 'modular' design, to oppose monolithic design, if you will.
Operating Systems and Feature Support
First, let's cover what both systems will do. Linux and Windows will each run HTML, CSS, DHTML, XHTML, XML, JavaScript, Java, CGI, Perl, and most other popular web technologies absoutely fine. E-mail, FTP, reporting, and other basic features are supported all the same, too. Conveniently, both operating systems also do an excellent job interfacing with Microsoft FrontPage.
Linux excels by offering the best environment for open source development such as PHP and Ruby on Rails. Databases on Linux typically use MySQL or PostGresSQL. Most existing applications that are open source seem to come better suited for Linux, or at least end up there first.
Windows excels by offering the best environment for ASP and other Microsoft-proprietary applications such as Microsoft Exchange. When used on the web, databases on Windows typically rely on MS SQL.
Operating Systems and Security
The Windows VS Linux security debate is a very old one, which the nerd community will likely never agree on. The reason is simple - in the end, nothing on a computer is gauranteed secure. Some things we can't change – such as unskilled server administrators, brute-force password crackers, unsecured PHP or ASP scripts, social engineering risks in large companies, and more. In the end, these variables vastly outweigh the security risks existing within either operating system.
The most common argument against Windows security is that because of its monolithic design (mentioned previously), it is easier for hackers to compromise an entire server. For example, if a security exploit is found in the IIS web server, it could potentially be used in compromising the entire Windows server, as IIS is deeply interconnected with the core of the Windows. It's for this same reason that external browsers such as Mozilla FireFox tend to be seen as safer for a Windows PC than the integrated Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The most common argument against Linux security is exactly the largest argument for Linux security – that it's entirely open-source. With potentially the entire world with its eyes on Linux security, Linux has both the largest, most educated security team, and logically the most educated community of hackers, too.
Future Development
As if this isn't enough to soak in, we're now left to think about the future. As Microsoft has become increasingly dominated in the web hosting industry, we can expect future releases of Windows server to become increasingly like Linux with modular design; at least according to Microsoft representatives at last year's HostingCon.
In closing, if things continue on the course they're on now, it's also safe to assume that both sides will continue working to accommodate one another as much as possible, but your best bet is to pursue the type of web applications are important to you, as either side will probably be around for a long time. For open-source applications, your best choice will likely always be Linux, and for closed-source applications, Windows should remain a safe bet for years to come.
4 Questions To Ask Yourself About Lifetime Web Hosting
We have all see these deals from time to time "Lifetime Web Hosting! Pay one price for the lifetime of your account!" On the surface the deal seems to be good. But is it? There are several questions you should ask yourself before you consider such a deal, because you may not get your money's worth out of it, and you may experience some other unfortunate consequences. So how do you know if lifetime web hosting is right for you?
1. How long will you have your web hosting account?
The first question to ask yourself is how long will you have a hosting account for the particular site you are building? The way most lifetime hosting offers work is they determine how long (in months) an average customer stays with their company and multiply that number by their monthly selling price for a web hosting account. They will then use that number to determine how much to charge as a one time hosting fee.
If you are only planning to have your account for 1 year or less, it probably isn't worth it to purchase a lifetime web hosting account, as you will be charged a premium for your hosting account.
If you plan on keeping your account for more than 2 or 3 years, it may be worth the price, but you will have to answer the following questions to see if a lifetime hosting account is really for you.
2. Is your web site going to require a lot of resources?
If you plan on having a web site that has a high amount of traffic, or will actively use a database, you may want to re-think your purchase. Companies that sell lifetime hosting accounts make money from you once, but their expenses happen every month. As a result, they have to continue to sell lifetime web hosting accounts in order to make enough income to pay their expenses, which gives them a strong motive to minimize.
One of the expenses, is server space and capacity. The more servers a web hosting company has, the more their monthly expenses are. One way to reduce their expenses, is to put more hosting accounts on a server than it can reasonably handle with the expectation that most websites will not use the full capacity of their account. Many times, these servers are oversold on space and bandwidth (think of an airline selling more tickets than they have seats for a specific flight).
The result is that sites on these servers tend to be slower than average, and if you have a site that has a lot of traffic, many of your visitors may have trouble getting to your site, and will leave before your web page shows up in their browser.
If this situation isn't important to you, the next question is certainly one you should be asking yourself.
3. What is the refund policy of the hosting company?
Since many of the servers in these lifetime hosting companies are overloaded, they usually take a zero tolerance policy on any web site that causes any extra load on the server, which may cause it to crash, and it can be a one strike and your out, with no refund.
On over-extended servers, (servers with more hosting accounts on them than they have capacity for), it is very easy to create an overload on the server. It can be as simple as having a lot of page views from the traffic the website gets, or having your blog attacked by a bunch of robot scripts trying to post comment spam to your blog. There is nothing you can do about it in these cases, but it can cause a server that is already at it's limit, to crash.
If this happens after only 6 months into your web hosting contract, you may be totally out of luck and have your site shut down with no refund. In this case, it would have been a very expensive hosting service. Be sure to check the terms of service before purchasing this type of hosting.
4. Do you expect a high level of customer service?
The quality of the customer service goes along with the theme of reducing expenses. One of the first places most customers experience in expense cutting is the level of customer service. Much of the time, customer service is outsourced and overseas. There may be language barriers to contend with as well as some delays in getting your questions answered, and problems resolved. Sometimes you may have to deal with less experienced hosting administrators, but by no means do you find the less experienced customer service representatives only in the lifetime web hosting arena.
This is an important factor to consider because if the customer service is really bad, you may be forced to leave the hosting company and walk away from your entire hosting investment. Be sure to get as much information as you can about the particular company you are considering, especially their level of customer service and their technical competency.
When asking the question, "Is lifetime web hosting right for me?" you want to determine what kind of site you plan on having, and how you plan to use it (will there be heavy traffic or not?), how long you plan on having your web site up, and some other factors such as how important are things such as customer service to you. In a limited number of circumstances, lifetime web hosting can be a deal as it is better than free hosting, but if you step outside of the limited situations, you may end up paying a lot more than you bargained for.
How To Build a Successful Web Hosting Business
When you start your own hosting business, there are many things you will want to take into consideration. One of the most important things you will need to figure out is how you will attract customers. There are four important factors you will need to know in order to build a solid customer base with your business. If you are a reseller, you will want to know which company to buy your package from.
You will also need to have the skills necessary to run a hosting business. The very first issue you will want to pay close attention to is the design of your website. This is the first thing a visitor will seen when loading your site, and you will want to leave a good impression. If they aren't impressed with the design of your site, they are unlikely to become a customer. Your website should have an easy navigation menu, because few people will take the time to figure out how to move around your site. You should also try to use a custom design rather than a template.
Thousands of websites use generic templates, and they all have the same look and feel. You will not be successful online if you try to blend in with everyone else. You have to find a way to stand out, and using a custom design for your site is the first step. You want to have a professional look. It is also important to provide a variety of different hosting packages which can accomodate clients on a budget. Whether you decide to offer customer service via phone, IM, or email, make sure you respond to questions quickly. If you take longer than a day, your service will appear to be poor.
If you have some money, don't be afraid to invest in a tech support department. It is well worth it, and will separate your company from the thousands of other hosting services available. You should also provide tutorials on your website which will help your clients learn more how to optimize or market their sites. If your target is clients with e-commerce sites, write articles about how they can build their business.
It may be helpful to start a forum where your clients can exchange ideas or information. This could function as a kind of tech support where clients answer each others questions and problems. At the same time, if you start a forum it is critical that you provide excellent service. If you make an error with a client, it won't be long before many of your other customers learn about it.
Monitor Your Web Site for Downtime
For those in the Internet business the availability of their web site is a major concern. The cost of downtime for web businesses can amount to $10,000 an hour. And this is without counting the losses caused by missed opportunities and lost sales. Losses in image and credibility these businesses suffer because eventual downtime is even harder to quantify.
Many of today's web hosting providers offer 99% uptime for their web servers. If you have already chosen one or if you are planning to use one with such a high uptime should you be concerned on the whole matter anyway?
Let's see how much 99% uptime means. For a 30-day month you have a total of 720 hours. 99% of this is 712.8 hours. Are you comfortable with your web site taking a day off every month? And this if 99% uptime happens. Can your web hosting provider back up its uptime promises with real facts? How can you tell that?
For companies making business online it might seem a good idea to move their Internet operations in-house. They develop their own infrastructure, hire specialized personnel, only to keep their business online. The cost of such an enterprise would seem rather high for the ones seasoned in the Internet business. Why? Because of the high cost implied: around $20,000 a year, without even thinking of the logistical burden.
The best way to avoid that while ensuring your business is online is to have monitoring reports available on your web host's uptime.
For companies or individuals having their web hosting providers monitored by a third party is a guarantee not only that their money is well spent, but also, an most importantly, that their Internet business is up and running.
Having their services monitored by a third party is beneficial even for the web hosting providers. That is serious web hosting providers. Offering reports of their uptime monitored by a third party and placing links to them on their home page is bound to boost the confidence of existing customers as well as the one of the prospecting customers in the quality of service that host is providing for its customers.
This is a not only a great marketing tool, but also translates to very good customer relationship. This is vital to web hosting providers as the cost of attracting a new customer is from 5 to 10 times higher than the cost of retaining an existing customer.
Having monitoring reports, even better if they are provided by a third party, available on the host's web site is sure to reduce the burden on the technical support center. Many calls to technical support centers from customers regard dial-up problems such as slow connection, download times, web site accessibility or various computer issues that are often related to the personal computer of the customer rather than are problems on the host's side. This is why the number of calls to the tech support center could be reduced up to a third simply by posting the monitoring reports on the hosting provider's web site or by simply providing a link to them.
As shown above, when talking about downtime problems the stakes are high in the Internet business. Disputes regarding the uptime will never be missing between the web hosting provider and its customers, and their resolution is almost every time a delicate issue. This is why independent monitoring provided by a third party can make the resolution of these disputes much easier for the conflicting parties.
Having a web host that provides monitoring of its uptime by a third party is the best guarantee that you can get for your web site's uptime. With such level of service you can be sure that the money you are spending for your web presence can give your or your company the best return of investment.
Web Hosting and Why Service Is King
Web Hosting and Why Service Is King
If you are an Internet business owner, you definitely have a website. Where you choose to maintain that site makes a big difference. You can’t afford to trust your Internet business to just any web hosting company. You need a web hosting company that understands that service is all they really have to offer.
Technical Matters
No one can dispute the fact that server speed and reliability, upgraded hardware and software and web hosting features are all important. After all, these are the features that will determine how fast your Internet business will be able to grow and expand. You don’t want to have to change web hosting companies in the middle of the game. Ideally, you want to stay with the same web hosting company for as long as you own your business. It just makes life easier.
Time Is Money
One important aspect of web hosting that people frequently overlook is the service. Yes, price matters, but service matters even more. Low prices won’t mean a thing if your website is down. If your site goes down, you lose sales – it is as simple as that. Also, when you have an Internet business, time is money. You don’t want to waste time waiting for the web host to provide you with that much-needed support. Every minute, hour or day that you have to wait for answers is another day that you could have spent doing what matters most – providing service to your customers and increasing your bottom line.
Why Service Counts More
These days, it is hard to find a web hosting company that focuses almost entirely on customer service. Yet, if you are able to find one of them, you will have hit the jackpot! A web hosting company that specializes in customer service is very valuable to you. Why? Because their aim is to keep you happy as a customer. This means that they will answer your calls promptly and provide you with the very best service. Additionally, because their focus is on you, the customer, this means that they want your business to succeed as well. It is in their best interest to make sure that they are providing you with the tools that you need for your business to be successful. Instead of trying to sell you a cookie-cutter web hosting package that has been sold to hundreds, perhaps thousands of businesses, they will listen to your needs and be able to customize a web hosting package especially designed for your business. In addition, they will:
Provide customer support 24/7
Give you real-time access to their server status
Give you a money-back guarantee
Assist you with moving your website from another web hosting company
Have a toll-free customer support phone number
Consult with you on customized solutions for your busines
Your Internet business is your livelihood – don’t leave it to chance. Your choice of web hosting company can make the difference between the success and failure of your business. By choosing a web hosting company that focuses on service, you can make the right decision and give your business a fighting chance!
Unlimited Bandwidth is just a myth
How Much Bandwidth / Monthly Transfer Do You Need?
Bandwidth is the measurement of the amount of data transmitted over an internet connection in a given time. The majority of web hosting companies will set monthly limits. Some of these hosts will allow overselling which means your site will remain up but you receive a bill for the extra amount used others will simply pull the plug until next month.
Bandwidth explained:
Bandwidth is the amount of data transfer that you are allowed to have for a hosting package i.e. Let's say you have a web page that is 48KB in size, now each time a user opens your site and goes to that page S/he downloads 48 KB of information on to their computer. If a 100 users view that page one time each then there has been a total of 4800 KB of data transferred from the server on which your files are stored for the computer of users.
Size of web Page: 48 KB
Number of users who viewed the web page: 100
Total amount of data transferred: 48KB * 100 = 4800 KB
Bandwidth is the term that is used to denote the amount of data that has been transferred from your web space.
The amount of bandwidth that you require while choosing a host depends on two factors:
1. The size of your site.
2. The popularity of your site.
If your site is not very big and you do not have any audio/video downloads and it's not very popular i.e. not a lot of people visit your site then you do not really require a lot of bandwidth, on a average a web site uses up only 500 MB of bandwidth per month. Or if your site is small but extremely popular then you might have to go for a web hosting package that offers high bandwidth.
On the other hand if your web site is huge, providing audio/video downloads, as well as being very popular then you would certainly require a huge amount of bandwidth. Let's say you have a video file that is 150 MB in size and in a single day a 100 visitors download the file. This means that 15 GB of bandwidth will have been used. If you multiply that by 30 days for the month it comes to 450 GB.
Unlimited Bandwidth
Many website hosting companies offer "unlimited bandwidth" as part of their web hosting packages.
It's absolutely true, you can have unlimited bandwidth. However, you will need an unlimited amount of money by your side! Jokes apart, if you ever come across such a host it would be best to turn around and run back the way you came from.
Any web hosting company claiming "Unlimited Bandwidth" is simply lying. There's no such thing as "Unlimited Bandwidth".
In the real world, we've never seen any broadband company offering an internet connection as "Unlimited Megabytes Per Second." So, how could a web hosting company, which normally doesn't even own its own access lines, claims to customers that it will give them "Unlimited Bandwidth"? I have yet to come across a hard disk with unlimited disk space either.
Just think, if you can get unlimited bandwidth for $25-30 a month then why aren't big companies like Sun, Microsoft etc. not hosted there? In fact, why isn't everyone hosted there? For that matter, if unlimited is a standard feature then why don't all website hosting companies offer it? Is it because the hardware is expensive? No, it's because some hosts are honest and don't give in to such gimmicks.
There are a lot of ways you can be duped by these ' unlimited' hosts; here are just a few of them:
1. The secret of 'unlimited' is actually buried in the Terms of Service by the host. Do not be surprised to find that unlimited only equals 900mb or so .
2. The host may restrict the sort of files that you can host on their server. Generally image galleries and audio/video files attract a lot more downloads thereby resulting in higher bandwidth consumption. So if there are no files of this type, your site won't really require a lot of bandwidth.
3. Some newly opened hosts use it as a scam. They take your money and after a few months when their server starts to become slow or reaches its limit, they run. with your money!
4. Some hosts outline in their Terms of Service that you can have unlimited bandwidth as long as you qualify for it. i.e. Your site must use less then, let's say 2 GB of bandwidth in order to qualify for the unlimited bandwidth feature. As soon as your site goes over that limit they either start charging you for it or cut off your downloads altogether.
In life it's absolutely true that you you always get what you pay for, and it's no different for web hosting.
If a host is using a cheap advertising gimmick like 'unlimited bandwidth' they maybe lying about a few other things too.
In short: Website Hosting Companies offering "Unlimited Bandwidth" to attract customers need to be avoided. Most of the time, high bandwidth sites on these "Unlimited" plans will be disconnected, and no refund given or will end up with a large bill at the end of the month that they had not counted on. Normally, the web hosting company will simply say that the site violated its Acceptable Use Policy or Terms of Service.
So Why Do Unlimited Bandwidth Plans Exist?
Most websites only consume a very small amount of bandwidth and disk space. Web hosting companies that provide unlimited anything as a plan feature are banking on the fact that you won't use very much. Unlimited is a marketing trick to get your business. The web hosting market is very competitive. Although selling plans that pretend to be unlimited can seem dishonest, it does not mean that the hosting company will not provide good service. Check in the hosting company's Terms of Service: there will probably be a note about what "unlimited" really means.
When Are Unlimited Plans Ok?
If you have a small website and know that it will not consume too much space or bandwidth, then unlimited plans make your choices a bit easier to understand. Most plans that offer unlimited will have some restrictions such as no audio or video downloads. The reason audio or video downloads are typically not allowed in unlimited hosting plans is because these types of files consume significant bandwidth and disk space which exposes the host to the risk of having to add more hard drive space and bandwidth, which costs them more money. If you choose an unlimited plan and you know your needs won't be very intensive then you won't run into any problems.
When Are Unlimited Plans Not Ok?
If you intend to have a lot of visitors to your site, lots of downloads, including audio or video files, do not choose an unlimited plan hoping to get unrestricted bandwidth. You will find yourself with problems. Your web host is not going to run at a loss for long - they could shut down your website or even charge you extra (read the terms of service).
So What Is The Best Thing To Do?
The best course of action is to plan ahead. Remember, you can always buy more bandwidth or disk space if you need - often for just a few extra pounds
Only consider an unlimited hosting plan if you know your disk space and bandwidth requirements are very low. If, on the other hand, you have an ecommerce site or a site that you expect to grow in size and bandwidth in future, avoid any plans that offer unlimited bandwidth or disk space.
Remember it is impossible for any provider to actually provide an unlimited amount of bandwidth or disk space.
Understanding the Shared Webhosting
This article is intended for online newbies.
If you are thinking of starting online home based business, shared webhsoting is the best option. Shared webhosting is an ideal for new online starters, individuals or small-to-medium scale businesses that cannot afford to have fast connection to the internet for their web site on their own. This is where the shared webhosting businesses come in. They provide the customers a way to outsource their Internet requirements in a more affordable way. Shared webhosting is housing and serving files for a web site.
Individuals and companies are allowed to share the cost of a fast Internet connection for serving files in the shared webhosting service allows. This is the basic, entry-level fee-based hosting service available to the customer. With shared webhosting clients are allowed to host their website on a powerful server at a minimal affordable monthly cost. Shared webhosting provides individual sites with connectivity and guaranteed uptime. Shared webhosting is designed to host small-scale e-commerce sites web pages. Shared webhosting is commonly used by first-time webmasters because they can have a reliable Web presence without having advanced technical know-how. Shared webhosting is good for small-scale consumer because they are assured of transparent services, domain name for its website and set of email addresses.
Due to its low cost, it makes shared webhosting very attractive to the consumers. A minimal monthly fee for a shared webhosting service is preferable than a dial-up service. Most small-scale business and individuals prefer shared webhosting because of its low price and it provides basic services. Furthermore, shared webhosting popularity is its convenience of use. Site activation and set-up time in shared webhosting is fast, usually takes a few minutes after ordering the services.
Usually, Shared webhosting services are bundled. With a minimal monthly fee, it offers multi-platform website solutions. Bundled services that are more than even for your businesses include: limited amount of disk storage space for web pages, limited amount of monthly data transfer, email forwarding services with physical email boxes that allows you email aliases at your domain name, unlimited file transfer protocol (FTP) services. Shared webhosting alos provide access to Web statistics for you to gage the number of internet visitors visiting your web site. This service usually includes raw statistical logs and site statistics (how many visitors visited your site). Also, shared webhosting will include free 24X7 technical supports. Tips: more visitors will consume more space of your data transfer, and that would cause your server to crush. If you expect rapid growing number of your visitors (for example if you invest more in advertising), you should choose a service that offer more space. The best option is to upgrade your hosting plan.
Additional services in a shared webhosting are daily tape backup of web site, anonymous FTP server for you to provide public access via file transfer protocol format and CGI-BIN access to upload scripts that will add features to your website. Tips: daily backup is also important for your business success!
Again if you are a new online starter (commonly called newbie), shared webhosting is truly a great way to avail of fast internet connection for your website at a very minimal monthly cost. You can start your home based business with a small investment of less than 100 bucks. Visit my site to read more home based business tips and opportunities.
How To Switch Hosting Providers Without Downtime
To many the idea of moving your web site from one host to another can sometimes seem like a daunting task but the process of moving your site is simple when you know what steps to take and the order to take them in. This article will walk you through the steps required to perform a site move without the downtime.
Firstly there is this one important thing you need to remember, DO NOT TERMINATE YOUR EXISTING HOSTING ACCOUNT until the very last step. You may be very unhappy with your current hosting but it is essential that your current hosting account remains active until you are 100% sure your site is all operational with the new hosting provider.
If you follow the steps below you should be able to transition from one host to another without any downtime to your web site.
Create A New Account
Firstly you need to choose your new hosting provider, once you have chosen that provider sign up for the chosen hosting package and once the new account is setup you can move on to the next step.
Backup All Your Files From Your Old Account
This is a relatively simple process, but can be time consuming depending on the size of your web site. Go to your old hosting account and download all the files via FTP, and backup any databases in use. Remember that you cannot cancel this account yet even though you have backed up all your files.
Upload All Your Files To Your New Account
Once you have backed up your files on your old hosting account, it is time to go to your new hosting account and upload the backups via the new hosts FTP.
Create Your Mail Accounts
To avoid losing any of your email when you later change your domain name server addresses, it is imperative that you now create all the same email accounts that you had with your old hosting provider in your new hosting account. Once this has been done, all email addresses on the new account should match the email address on your old account.
Checking of Your Files and Links
Now it is time to check all the pages of your web sites and verify that all links are working correctly on your new host. To do this you will need to create a temporary URL to the web site. A quick and easy way to do this is to create a sub domain of another URL and point it to your new web site by the way of mirroring. Any good web hosting provider should provide you with the ability to create temporary a URL so you can test your new site.
Changing Your DNS (Domain Name Server)
If you are now certain that your files have all been uploaded correctly and the links within your site are working correctly, you can change your DNS (domain name servers). Your new host should have provided you with their DNS settings. If they have not, contact them and ask what addresses should be used for your domain name. Usually the addresses will look like this, ns1.domainname.com, ns2.domainname.com.
The place to change the DNS addresses is whoever your domain name is registered with. If you registered the domain name through a registrar, you will need to login to their control panel and change the DNS servers there. If it was registered with your old host, you will need to login to their control panel and change the DNS entries there.
Wait For DNS Changes To Propogate
After you have changed your DNS (domain name servers) you will need to wait between 24-48 hours for your domain to propogate across the internet. During this waiting period your site will still be served from your old hosting account, as the DNS propogates your site will be served from your new host. Once the propogation has completed all requests to your domain will be served from you new host.
Cancel Your Old Account
Make sure you wait at least 48 hours for the domain name to propogate, and make sure that your domain name is resolving to your new hosting account before cancelling your old account.
Final Words
By following these steps you should now have successfully transferred your web site from your old host to your new host without any downtime.
Top Ten Reasons to Choose a Web Hosting Provider
Choosing a web hosting provider is different for everyone. Every website has a specific set of needs and you have to find a web host that provides the needs that are specific to your website.
However, there are certain things to look for when choosing a web-hosting service. In this article I will give you the ten most common things people should be looking for. These are not necessarily in the order of priority, because as I said every website has different needs and your priorities might not be the same as the next website owner.
1. Tech Support: Tech support in any business venture is always important. As a website owner though, the tech support that your web-hosting service provides is going to be crucial to your business. If your website is offline or not working properly it will cost you sales.
If you have been buying traffic to your website and it goes offline, you are still being charged for all of those visits to your website, which they never saw. The money you are spending on your ad campaign, AdWords program or other traffic sources is going right down the drain. You cannot afford to choose a web host that does not respond quickly when you have a problem.
2. Feedback Forums: A web host that provides a forum, message board, or chat room to discuss hosting issues or to get help in is more likely to get a user to use their web-hosting services. The reason behind this is people feel more comfortable with a web host that gives a personal touch and one that cares enough to provide a higher level of service.
3. Room to Grow: If your web-hosting service only offers one package, it’s a bad sign in most cases. What happens as your web business grows and so do your web hosting needs? If they offer upgrades to dedicated servers, larger storage and bandwidth plans, and a lot of other options, then you can feel confident choosing them as your web hosting provider. You don’t plan to stay small and your web host shouldn’t plan for you to stay small either.
4. Storage Space: This is usually only an issue with websites that will be offering users a lot of downloads such as music or software. The average website can get by with about 10 megabytes of storage, but again you want room to grow, plus you can actually use your storage to back up files from your computer. Don’t backup secure documents there, but a lot of your files can be backed up online. You have storage so use it. The more storage space they offer, the better.
5. Bandwidth or Transfer: This is the size of every file visitors to your website download automatically to their computers each time they visit. The average webpage is around 30k and then you add the graphics and other files that are displayed to the user and you get your bandwidth or transfer usage. The average website can get by on less than 10 gigabytes of bandwidth per month. However if you are offering downloads like software, music, and movies, or you are going to be driving a lot of traffic to your website, you may want to choose a plan that offers you more bandwidth. Make sure your webhosting provider has options that give you room to grow here as well.
6. Easy to use Control Panel: Cpanel is one of the most popular control panels for web hosts to offer, but there are others. Ask what type of control panel your web host is offering to provide you with. Again, this need is different for everyone and this is based on your level of expertise. Some advanced users would rather not have or don’t care about control panels because they know how to configure everything in the server by themselves. Less advanced users need to be sure they pick a web hosting service that provides an easier interface so they can feel comfortable making the alterations they need to their website.
7. FrontPage extensions: A lot of people that do not know HTML still use FrontPage or other programs to design their websites with. If you use FrontPage, you need to make sure your web host is set up for FrontPage extensions.
8. Type of Servers: An example of this is websites that will be built using the .NET framework or ASP. For your website you will need to make sure your web host has a windows based server. Most web hosting providers are on Linux or Apache and ASP websites will not function on them. A better choice is to stay away from building a website that requires a windows server in the first place.
9. Added Features: Instant Install is a feature offered by most web hosts these days even if they call it another name. It’s an automated process for installing databases and database driven features you can add to your website like photo galleries, forums, blogs, content management systems, calendars, guestbooks, and more. It’s just as easy to choose a web-hosting provider that gives you these features in case you need them as it is to choose one that doesn’t. Again, room to grow is important.
10. Is your web host a good neighborhood: This one is a little more difficult to explain and find out about but it is important. Some search engines punish websites who are in a bad neighborhood. They do this by banning websites that come from a particular set of IP addresses due to previous problems with websites on those IP addresses. You need to see samples of other websites that are hosted by your web hosting service. If a lot of them are warez websites, porn websites, file sharing websites, or other websites whose activities do not seem to savory, then you may be looking at a bad neighborhood and may want to find another web host.
That’s my top 10 tips for choosing a web hosting service. I hope you find these tips helpful when you look for where to host your next website!
Web Hosting and Transfer or Bandwidth
So, you have your domain name and you have designed a website or had a website built for you, now what. Well, of course you need hosting. A lot of people want to start a business online but are not aware of some of the basics like how people are able to view or visit your website.
What is web hosting? Right now, if you have already built your website, all of those files are on your computer. People who are surfing the web don’t have access to your computer, therefore cannot find your website. Advanced users know they can turn their computer into a server where people are actually coming to their computer to view their website, however, this is not recommended and certainly not recommended for someone who is not very advanced as a computer technician.
There are computers who are set up to be servers. These are called host computers as well to simplify things. You need to upload your website files to the hosting computer so they can make it available for others to view on the web. This is the service we call web hosting.
Will just any web host do? No. This is a common misunderstanding about web hosting. All web hosts are not created equal. There are many different levels of web hosting and many different plans and packages to consider. There are also many other things you have to consider when choosing a web hosting company. Let’s go over one of the most important issues when choosing a web hosting plan to help you understand better.
A lot depends on your individual needs. Will your website have a lot of graphics and images? Will it have movies? Music downloads? Software or other downloads? Or is it a very simple and compact website that is mostly text? Do you expect a lot of traffic to your website?
The reason for all those questions is something called “bandwidth” or “transfer”. The amount of storage space a web-hosting plan offers you is usually far less important than the amount of transfer or bandwidth the web host offers you.
Every time someone visits your webpage, every file included in that webpage is downloaded from your website to their computer. In other words, from the web host’s computer to the visitor’s computer. This includes each graphic or image on the page, every icon, even the html page itself is downloaded by a user just visiting your webpage. The size of each of those files being transferred to the visitors computer is the amount of “transfer” or “bandwidth” you are using.
Let’s say you get 100 visitors per day to your website. Let’s also say that your html page is around 15k and you have 5 images on that webpage that altogether are around 50k. That means each visitor to your website is using up 65k in bandwidth every time they visit that page. Let’s also say your average visitor opens 3 pages within your website and those pages are the same size as your main page. That means each visitor uses 195k minimum and that is if they don’t keep going back to your main page.
Multiply that 195k times the 100 visitors per day you get and you are using 19,500k or a little over 19 megabytes of transfer per day. Multiply that by 30 days and you get 585,000k or 585 megabytes of “transfer” or “bandwidth” used per month.
Now if your web hosting plan allows for more bandwidth than you think you will need, then you know you are okay there. However, make sure you know upfront what the cost of going over your allotted bandwidth is. Some webhosts charge a lot for every megabyte you use over the limit they set for you in the plan you chose. It’s a good idea to pick a webhosting plan that is just one step above the one you think you need to allow for growth. You might become very popular like a rock star overnight!
Reseller Web Hosting Explained
Reseller web hosting is a web hosting service that re-bundles services available from real hosts or primary providers. Reseller web hosting could be an individual or small business that makes use of the bandwidth and web servers of a higher tier provider or primary host and resells the same to the customers by offering value added services like web designing, domain registration and web programming.
Most real hosting companies allow reseller web hosting in order to boost their sales. Recently, a significant number of web hosting businesses have infiltrated the internet with an eye on the ever-growing number of people who are jumping online. In order to remain competitive, hosting companies look for ways to market their services to a greater number of people rather than offering their services individually. This leads to the business of reseller web hosting accounts. In reseller web hosting, real hosts are able to generate bulk businesses and delegate individual clients to reseller servers. In turn, reseller web hosting businesses look after some individual client’s needs. This is a win-win situation for both, since real hosts will have an intermediary in the form of reseller web hosting to individual customers without having to attend to them one by one. The reseller is also able to put up a business and earn income without having to shell out capital outlays. Although in some instances they do compete with each other for a fair share of the web hosting market, the real hosts can still benefit from this set-up considering they do charge a certain amount from resellers.
The services offered by a reseller web hosting service do not really differ from a real host. As a matter of fact, reseller web hosting offers more features to the customers. Due to the added value services, reseller web hosting can offer web design and programming services to each customer that are often times not possible from real hosts. Real hosts tend to focus on bulk accounts and corporate clients. Reseller web hosting offers value added services to customers in order to maintain a competitive edge against bigger web hosting services.
Reseller web hosting is also better able to establish friendly relationship with their customers that go beyond the contract terms. This is the secret for those successful reseller web-hosting services. They fill the need that bigger hosting servers cannot provide. Those who want to start a reseller web hosting business are advised to look for a real host, such as Hostgator or SpeedHostingZ.com. It is very easy to obtain a reseller account from a real host these days.
If you need simple hosting services for your web site and you prefer to have personal attention from the web host for design and programming then a reseller web hosting account is highly recommended. However, if you have a business website that requires complex e-commerce solutions, have a very large number of customers accessing your web site or you have a large number of websites to be hosted, a reseller hosting would probably not suffice. This is particularly true for e-businesses. For this, you need a real host provider for your web site.
Video in a Flash
Web Hosting is going through a revolution. The ever lower cost of video streaming is morphing websites into less images, less text, more video. A recent look at Yahoo! ™ shows a home page with video links front and center. One of the emerging technologies allowing low cost streaming is Flash FLV. It is a format that is designed for web playback, offering high rates of compression. Flash Player, the embedded plugin that is in 98% of all internet browsers, allows playback of Flash FLV using SWF files. It is a preferred method because there is no need for a 3rd party download. FLV is a "Flash Live Video" file.
Not many people know it, but Macromedia (Adobe) has developed a sophisticated media delivery platform, that is emerging as a sleeping giant. Flash is the world's most pervasive software platform, used by over 1 million programming professionals and reaching 98% of Internet-enabled desktops worldwide as well as a wide range of devices.. You might be shocked to hear that using Flash for your Video Media Delivery can save you a bundle of cash!
The Flash Player browser plugin can play an FLV, but that FLV, must be either embedded in or linked to a SWF. That is, you can't just put the actual FLV on an HTML page. You can however reference the FLV file using action script and SWF (the player controls), which now opens up the door to brand your player, add colors and logos, skins, and links to further information. Customization is now only limited to your imagination and Flash Skills. 4 hour movies can be streamed instantly with no buffer wait or download lag time.
Highlights of the Flash Communications Server include the ability to provide your end users with the best possible experience via a seamlessly integrated client that lets you brand your broadcast the way you want to, with any devices containing the Flash Player being capable of delivering movies when connected to the MX Communications server.
A Fantastic File Format
The file format used in this process is Flash FLV or Flash Live Video, and it plays in a Flash Player. While traditional methods of media delivery include some kind of download to the user's computer, either in a pre-loader or through temporary Internet files, Flash MX Communications server and a Flash FLV Player connect in a completely different manner. Simply put, it's a new connection to the file each time the user uses the controls in the player. This means that in the background it's a "start here" – "stop here" – "start again here" style of play, with no downloads or caching.
Here's The Top Ten Reasons to Stream Video Using Flash
1. FLV format file sizes after conversion are up to 60% smaller, saving server storage costs.
2. FLV's start - stop connection style saves on bandwidth perhaps as much as 60% less per month.
3. FLV format has no local player in operating systems, so file sharing is nullified.
4. FLV format plays directly in more browsers than Windows Media, Real Player or QuickTime.
5. FLV server can authenticate clients, and control users as you wish.
6. FLV players can be completely customized for logos, branding and embedded links.
7. FLV players can play files from a programmable database, and simple administration area.
8. FLV players can be programmed to integrate with databases for free previews, time, users.
9. FLV encoding can include user information for content tracking, misuse, or DRM.
10. Flash Communications servers are easier to maintain than others, and less prone to security hacks.
Who is using Flash Communication Servers? Google, MTV, Yahoo, IBM, Sony, Universal Studios, the list is growing. Flash is suitable for various applications, including live, on-demand, audio and video streaming, 24 x 7 live radio broadcasting, pay-per-view, with digital rights management, delivery to mobile devices, including phones, product demonstrations, commercials and movie trailers, employee and partner training, corporate communications – the list goes on and on...
What Is Web Hosting Uptime And What Does It Mean For You
When you begin to look for a company to host your website, other than the amount of space and bandwidth that is offered, a company will usually promote their web hosting uptime. Most web hosting companies offer an uptime guarantee to promote how well their service is.
Web hosting uptime is a measurement of the time a computer server has been running, the longer the web hosting uptime the better the service (usually). Uptime is important to not only web hosting companies, but to any person or company that has a website, because if a website is down it could hurt a personal company’s reputation as well as the reputation of the web hosting uptime guarantee. Web hosting companies strive for a 99.9% uptime, which means that there would be less then 2 minutes of downtime a day.
Factors that impact a web hosting uptime are sometime unavoidable, but many companies strive to prevent downtime. Downtime can be classified in three ways: planned downtime which is caused when a server is updated or upgraded, semi-planned downtime which is caused when software companies find a security breach and a patch must be put into place, and the worst is unplanned downtime which can be caused by an overloaded server, a software/hardware malfunction, or malicious software.
Uptime guarantees made by web hosting companies are based off of past information. Web hosting uptime can be monitored and maintained a few ways. There are services that provide 24/7 monitoring. Large web hosting companies have their own departments that monitor their servers. A loss in web hosting uptime can be prevented by having a redundant server to fall back on incase the primary server goes down. For a planned single server change this method may be practical for a larger company, but the costs implied for an additional server in a smaller company or providing this for multiple servers in larger companies can be impractical. Unplanned downtime would also keep this method from working well.
Some niceties that many websites provide is a friendly downtime message that will still allow the user know that the site is only temporarily down. Larger web hosting companies are able to provide a quicker return to normalcy to maintain their uptime guarantee, because they have staff readily available to respond to a downtime error quickly. Smaller companies may experience a longer downtime.
For consumers, researching web hosting uptime can prevent a package from being purchased from a web host that has a lot of downtime. There are websites that track a company’s web hosting uptime and provide reviews on the company freely for review. Other places to look for information are on forums either provided by the web hosting company or on web hosting review forums.
If your website does experience downtime you can contact the technical support or customer service department to see when your site will be restored. Understand that no web hosting company can have a 100% uptime guarantee. If your website experiences too much downtime switching to a different company with a higher and better web hosting uptime may be your only option.
Game Server Hosting - Ping or Die
Game servers are usually developed in a form of a standard component that can be found in many games that have a multiplayer option. After this kind of business became popular, hosting companies immediately responded to the growing demand and started offering dedicated servers for online gaming to both those who want to make business and to those who are simply enthusiastic. Generally game server hosting caters to two main groups of online games – those available from the main server, and those that operate through a series of distributed ones.
Centralized servers are mostly often used to host games that require these servers to be able to host thousands of users playing at the same time. The main server stores all the necessary data about the game environment and the cyber world is there 24 hours 7 days a week. The game goes on no matter if the user is online or offline. To participate in the game, a player usually needs special client software that connects to the main server. One of the most popular game using the technology of centralized servers is the World of Warcraft.
Another model is the distributed servers technology. This one is usually utilized by enthusiasts and small businesses. In this model the software is distributed onto several dedicated game servers. As an example, real-time strategies are usually based on this technology. They need frequent updates of the game world that is executed through messaging between users and servers. There should be a master server in this chain to control messaging between the whole bunch of distributed servers. Low latency and fast ping time - that is what needed for this model to be successful and ensure the fast speed of messages reaching the server and coming back to the user. Users usually choose servers with the best ping rates and connect to them to play online. That is why game server hosting companies connect their servers to the fastest networks. Security, operating system and applications tweaking and thorough configuration are also very important.
Hosting providers usually supply their clients with game server hosting services that include the most technologically advanced servers and network connections, very often with the preinstalled software to start online gaming business immediately. The most popular games using the technology of distributed servers are: Doom 3, Medal of Honor, Halo, Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, Quake 3 etc.
Game server hosting providers are expected to significantly increase their revenue due to such rapid growth figures of online gaming. Many hosting companies have already build up a wide range of special game server hosting offers including even those for $30-40 a month. This is significantly cheaper than many low-performance dedicated servers.
7 Simple Steps For Choosing A Great Web Host
There are thousands of web hosts around today with thousands of plans to choose from making what was once a simple procedure seem like a daunting task for both newbie and pro alike.
Whether you're looking for your first host or looking to move on to a better one there are 7 simple steps you must follow to succeed in choosing a great host.
1. Platform
The first and most crucial step in choosing a web host is determining the platform the web server should run, usually a choice between Unix/Linux and Windows.
Your choice is largely determined by your website and the technologies used to create it, generally a website created with Microsoft technologies (ASP, VB) will run on Windows servers while most other sites using open source technologies (PHP, Perl, Python etc) will run on Linux based systems.
2. Features
Once you've chosen your platform the next step is determining the features you'll need from your web host. Take your time with this step as the feature lists of web hosts are getting longer and longer every day and while some plans may look similar on the surface, a good look at the feature lists may tell another story.
Only you can determine the specific features you'll need, but some key things to keep an eye on are:
Disk Space
Bandwidth
Backups
Uptime
Money Back Guarantee
Domains Allowed
Databases (Number & type)
CGI, PHP, Perl, Python, SSI
Cron
Email accounts
The list goes on and on, just remember to take your time and make sure your new web host is going to provide you with everything you need.
3. Cost
Often this is the only thing people consider when choosing their first web host, funds are usually tight and on the surface most hosts look very similar. Sometimes you get lucky and choose a good host, but more often than not it turns out to be a horror story.
I can't stress enough that choosing a web host based on price alone is asking for trouble, remember that the cost of your web hosting is more than just the monthly fee, think about the total cost of ownership. TCO includes lost sales due to downtime & slow speeds, downtime rebates, extra bandwidth charges, setup costs, extra feature costs, and your monthly fee.
Many hosts will require you to pay yearly to get the best price available though there are some that allow you to pay by the month and still get the best price, it's really a matter of personal choice as to what payment method works best for you.
4. Customer Service
Customer service is another aspect that is often forgotten about until it is too late, something breaks and you need it fixed and those wonderfully handy sales people who were more than helpful in taking your money are now nowhere to be seen, all the while you're losing out on sales every minute.
You shouldn't settle for anything less than 24/7/365 service, your website needs to be running all the time so it's no good if your hosting company doesn't work during the holidays. Don't take the web hosting companies word for it, they all claim 24/7 support but few back it up with consistent performance. Be sure to test them out at various times of the day and night via phone, email and live chat if they offer it.
5. Support
An extensive knowledge base or faq can be a real time saver as well as being an indication of the level of customer service support and expertise you can expect to receive. Spend some time browsing the support sections of the website and see for yourself the level of support provided.
Are questions in the knowledge base answered thoroughly? Are real solutions provided or are they just “cut and paste” replies?
6. Longevity
Do a whois on the web host's domain name and find out the creation date, anything less than a year ago and the risk that they won't be around next year increases. They could be a great host, but considering more then 95% of new hosts go out of business within a year that really isn't something you should be taking a chance on.
7. Uptime
It's a fact of life that a web host cannot be online 100% of the time, servers need to be rebooted for security and software updates and any web host that doesn't get updated faces the increased risk of being successfully hacked.
99.9% uptime guarantees are pretty standard in the industry however a guarantee is only as good as how it is defined and the company behind it. Look for no less than a full months free hosting should they not meet their guarantee, a prorated refund based on the amount of downtime is virtually worthless. Say you pay $10 for a month of hosting and your site is down for 24 hours. They will refund you for one day of downtime which ends up being about 33 cents.
There you go, 7 simple steps for choosing a great web host. It's not rocket science, just a little research and investigating that can save a lot of heartache in the future.
8 Things You Need To Know When Changing Your Web Host
Changing from one web host to another can become necessary if your website becomes popular and your current host can't meet your needs for bandwidth, storage, etc. This can be especially true if your site is hosted on a free web host.
If a move become necessary, be sure to plan it carefully. The first step is to decide on a new hosting company, of course.
Once you have found a host that can meet all your needs, you need to move your site on to the new server. Before making any moves, be sure to back up your website from the old host.
If your website isn't well structured and has been growing haphazardly, this is a good time to consider redesigning things. That could simply mean a new page design or it could mean redesigning your database and content storage.
For the first 48 hours after moving to a new host, you should use a redirect page on your old site, that automatically forwards people to the new one. This will ensure that your visitors will see the new site, even if its IP address hasn't propogated yet.
It takes about 48 hours for a new website to get listed on most domain servers across the internet, so after that you should be fine.
A few more suggestions for an easy transition include:
1. Find out whether your new host is running on Unix or Windows and make sure it will be compatible with everything you're moving from the old host.
2. Check to see how much storage you need for all your files and content on your current site, and make sure you get enough on the new host to give you room to grow.
3. Check to see what services your new host offers, and make sure anything you have been using on your current host (like autoresponders, mail forwarding, etc.) is available.
4. If your current website is created using Microsoft Frontpage, make sure your new host supports Frontpage extensions.
5. Check to see what your new host's policy is for extra bandwidth, in case your site continues to get busier.
6. If the new host's server is a shared server, check to make sure there are no adult sites hosted on the same system. They can get busy and cause all the other sites on the same server to slow down.
7. Check the review sites and forums for customer feedback about your new host before signing up. These are good indicators of the level of service you can expect.
Once you have your data uploaded to your new host, test your site to make sure it's working properly. You should be able to preview your site before you fully switch your domain name to the new address.
ASP Hosting Simplified
ASP stands for Active Server Pages. It is a technology that enables users to design and creative interactive pages for their websites, using something called “server-side scripting”. What do we mean by interactive? Forms, in-site search engines, blogs, user forums, newsletters, calendars, WhoIs searches, web-based email, polls, surveys, hit counters and more.
Best of all, with ASP, no longer do webmasters have to concern themselves with what browser a visitor to their site is using. With ASP hosting, your website will appear identically on all computers, on all browsers, a claim that HTML simply cannot make.
Anytime a browser requests a webpage that has the .asp extension where the more familiar .htm or .html would be, the hosting provider’s web server interprets any ASP scripts in the program first and foremost, before delivering any HTML info to the browser. This is why you cannot simply run ASP websites with just any hosting company. The hosting company you choose must have servers that support ASP, or else the ASP scripts you use will be rendered useless.
When examining web hosting companies to find one that supports ASP, you must look specifically for ASP support. Do not simply assume that because a hosting company supports “most web-based scripts, from CGI to Perl” that it supports ASP. If it doesn’t say so in an obvious place on the sales site, go to the hosting company’s FAQ and look for ASP. And since most FAQs are searchable, this shouldn’t be difficult to do. If you’re really enamored with a particular hosting company (or their current promotion) but can find no information on ASP support, consider contacting them via email, telephone, or web chat to find out. It’s possible that they do support ASP and just have a lousy sales site (which may be an indicator of an altogether different sort).
Microsoft brought ASP to the world, and as such provides the platform - Windows - on which ASP generally works best. In order to play around with ASP scripts on your web pages, you’ll have to download and install onto your system an ASP server, like Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) or Microsoft’s Personal Web Server (PWS) -- one or both of which is included with most Windows packages for no extra charge. If you use Windows on your machine and have never encountered IIS or PWS, chances are it’s because you have to “Add” the program to your hard drive using the Windows software CD-ROM or through your control panel, since it’s often not included as part of the “Basic Install”.
Incidentally, Windows ME and Windows XP Home Edition are lacking in support for ASP scripts. But we’re willing to bet the forthcoming Windows Vista probably does.
For those webmasters on a PC that isn’t Windows-based, all hope is not lost. Sun Microsystems has developed a program called Chili!Soft ASP that allows other servers -- such as Red Hat, Apache, and Secure Server -- and other operating systems -- such as Linux, Solaris, and AIX -- to support ASP hosting.
Writing and using ASP scripts is easy too -- at least it’s no harder than HTML, with all commands occurring between “<%” and “%>;” instead of “<” and “>”. Not so big a difference, is there? And you can find an abundance of software tools all over the web (many for free) that helps even the greenest novice create interactive web pages rife with ASP.
ASP is such a versatile language that more and more hosting companies are finding themselves compelled to add ASP support to their hosting packages just to remain competitive. This, of course, is only to your advantage as you can comparison shop around for the best ASP hosting offerings right alongside all the other features you’re looking for.
cPanel Primer For The New Webmaster
If you are about to purchase web hosting, it is very likely that you will be using cPanel to manage your hosting. To get the most from your web hosting, you need to learn the workings of cPanel.
What Can Be Done with cPanel?
If your web hosting doesn't offer shell access, cPanel will be the only way to manage your web hosting, cPanel is a web based server control software that allows you to do the following operations and a whole lot more. Common operations such as adding FTP users, creating databases, creating mail accounts and a multitude of other hosting operations can all be performed with cPanel.
Creating Mail Addresses
If you have the domain xyz.com and you would like to create a mail address called info@xyz.com, you can perform the following. Firstly click on the Mail tab from the front page. There you will see options to create, modify or delete mail accounts. If you to forward mail to an existing account here you can set an addres to forward to the account of your choosing. To read emails access the Webmail tab from the front page
Managing your domains
You may want more than a single address directed towards one web site, for example if you owned xyz.com and xyz.net, this can be achieved by using the Parked Domains tab, here you can type any address that you own to point to one of your web sites. If you hosting provider allows you to have more than one web site on your account, you can add domains via the Addon Domains tab. If you hosting provider supports the creation of sub domains you can create these via the Sub Domain tab.
FTP Options
You can create additional FTP users, set their access levels and other FTP related tasks using the FTP tab.
Database Tasks
To create a new database, or modify existing databases use the Database tab. Here you can perform all allowed database tasks, to perform more advanced database operations you will need to use phpMyAdmin, this can also be accessed from the Database tab.
Analyze The Logs
When running a web site you need to know what your visitors like, where they are coming from, which search engines are bringing the most visitors and all other data about them. Normally you will have access to the raw log files, but these are hard to analyze, to see data that is formatted about your visitors in an easy to read way go to Web/FTP Stats, here you will have the option to review your sites statistics using a variety of software such as Webalizer or AWStats.
Fantastico
Most if not all cPanel installations these days come with Fantastico which is an auto installer for many php based scripts. Fantastico can be used to install popular php scripts such as Wordpress, Mambo, phpbb and many other php products. Using Fantastico is the easiest way to setup these php based scripts and will save you having to manually upload the scripts, and more often than not Fantastico will do all the configuration of the script for you which is a real time saver.
Final Words
cPanel is a very advanced application for configuring your hosting and learning all the tricks can take some time, but hopefully with this guide you will have the basics down and you can progress from here as your experience with web hosting increases.
All about Linux/Unix-based hosting
What is Linux/Unix-based hosting?
It means hosting that is provided on Linux/Unix operating systems platforms. There isn't much difference between these two types of operating systems because Linux/Unix is an improved version of Linux/Unix operating system. When just applying for web hosting companies for web hosting that is based on Linux operating system it doesn't matter which one you are using on your computer as it is commensurable with any operating system.
Usability
Some years ago Linux operating system used to be available only for professionals and if you were not an experienced user you had no future with this OS. In the last couple of years the situation has changed. Providers have done their best to make users' web sites administrating more comfortable and easier. In case you're just a beginner you'll find friendly control panels that include Web- interface. And if you are an experienced user you can control your site by means of shell.
Reliability
Experts claim that Unix-based platform is one of the most reliable ones but it will mainly depend on maintenance stuff professionalism. Thus quality and stability of Linux-based web hosting won't depend on some sudden system bugs and the operating system consistency itself secures your web site operating dependability.
Functionality
In this area Linux differs the most from other popular platforms. It can handle a lot of processes that happen at the same time. This gives you a possibility to get more from the server.
What Scripting Languages Are Available For Unix?
Unix supports a wide variety of application languages, more than any other operating system. The most common applications of such kind include C, C++, Shell, Perl, Tcl, Python, Java and PHP.
What Databases Does Unix Support?
Databases available for Unix are mSQL and mySQL. The one you choose would depend on your own needs and your Host Provider's offers. This is important for you to review when choosing a hosting company.
Cost
Linux operating system was developed by Linus Torvalds as an alternative to other operating systems and is being improved by many specialists all around the world. Most of its versions are free of charge. This circumstance makes Linux-based hosting much cheaper than any other. As for Linux versions they are sometimes called Linux Distributions. The most popular Distributions are RedHat and Mandrake. Which are easy to install have a lot of different utilities and suitable for any web hosting type.
Why choose Linux/Unix-based hosting?
So, as it was mentioned before using this platform is cheaper and more convenient than others. All existent scripts, like PHP, function best when using the Linux-based web hosting. Linux/Unix based web hosting upgrading possibilities increase when using Shell and Telnet access. The Linux/Unix-based platform is probably the most stable and reliable.
How To Determine How Much Space And Bandwidth You Need For Your Website
How much storage space and bandwidth will you need for your website? This is a question that you will need to answer before deciding on your web site hosting.
You'll need to look at the content that you'll be hosting on your site. Is it just plain text? Images? Audio and video files?
Plain text takes the least amount of space. Images take considerably more and audio and video files will need the most space. This applies to both the storage and the bandwidth.
Many web hosts offer what seems like a huge amount of storage space, assuming that you'll never use it. If everyone hosting websites on their server were to use the maximum space allowed, the servers would likely not be able to handle it.
You'll see a range of storage and bandwidth being offered. One host might be offering 1 gigabyte of storage while another could offer 500 megabytes at the same price. The quality of service is a key factor in choosing a web host, so don't just look for the one with the biggest offer.
The rule of thumb in the hosting industry is that 2MB of storage is enough to host 10 web pages and 4 or 5 images. Using this as a guideline, you can determine how much space you'll need to host your site.
You can calculate your bandwidth requirements in a similar way. Make sure you understand the difference between bandwidth and data transfer, however.
In non-technical terms, bandwidth is the diameter of a water pipe and data transfer is the amount of water that flows through it. If you're likely to have a lot of data being transferred, you should look for high bandwidth plans.
If you choose a plan with high data transfer but low bandwidth, your site can slow to a crawl when it gets too many visitors. The amount of information you're allowed to transfer is high enough, but the pipe it's flowing through doesn't allow enough to get through at once to keep up with all the requests.
The best way to manage your bandwidth and space is to keep your site as simple as possible. Don't use large images - optimize them for viewing on the web which will decrease their size considerably.
If you're not sure how to determine your needs, the better web hosting companies will be able to help you figure out which of their plans will best suit your website.
Do You Really Own Your Web Site?
If you have a web site, chances are you hired someone to help you get it launched. If you did, you have three primary components under the umbrella of "a web site." There is your domain name, also known as a "URL" or your web address. There is your web hosting - the space you rent on a server out there somewhere, to put your web site on. And then there is your web site itself, which is a combination of HTML files and images which are uploaded to that web hosting you rent.
The most cautious rule of thumb is that you should have three separate providers - a domain name registrar, a web hosting company, and a web site designer. The reason many web experts believe this is that if you have a problem with one, you still have control over the other two. For example, if your web hosting company causes you problems, you have your web content, and you have access to your domain, and you can easily shut off one hosting account, find another, and move your site. If your web designer goes bad, you can at least change access to your site, move it or provide the information to a new designer. Conversely, if you have all three components in one place, you run the risk of finding yourself without a web site, perhaps temporarily, or worst case, having to start from scratch.
Although I'm personally a believer in keeping it all separate, the majority of business people don't think like that and a great many folks have gone for an "all in one" situation where the hosting, domain and web site are with one provider. Whatever your scenario is, there is one absolutely critical piece of information you should take from this article. You MUST have administrative control over all three components of your web presence: domain, hosting and content. You don't have to DO anything with it - except print out the access information and stash it away. You can rely on someone to manage it all for you, like I do for most of my clients. But if you don't have this information, you don't really own your web site!
Even if you have a wonderful relationship with your service provider, stop and ask yourself the following:
Do you know the name of the domain registration company?
Do you have the username and password to access your domain account?
Are you certain that YOU are listed as the legal owner of the domain?
Do you know where your web site is hosted?
Do you have the "FTP" (this stands for file transfer protocol) username and password to get to your web site on the host server?
A frightening number of new clients come to me without this information, and very often, they've already run into trouble and need help. In some cases, they have had to start all over with a new web site. In one situation, a client almost lost her domain name because the "all in one" company she had paid for a web site had made themselves the legal owners of the domain!
Don't wait until you have a problem - make sure YOU own your web site, right now.
