3 Tips to Help You Select a Good Web Hosting Provider

By Jason Chao

The web hosting market is very competitive. Finding a good hosting provider is not an easy thing. Fortunately, it's not as hard as finding a pearl in sands. If you know following 3 tips, you will even pick up the best web host quickly.

1. checking the infrastructure information

Usually you can get infrastructure information from a web host's website. Owning a data center shows the solid foundation of a web host. If the hosting company has its own data center instead of co-locating with others or rent a server from others, it shows the good reliability of the hosting server. A lot of resellers have no ability to control the rented equipments.

2. testing the customer support

24/7 customer support is the absolutely essential service. When your website is down, you need to reach some body that can solve the problem right away. The best way is to make a phone call to the web host. You can also use online chat and email to do the test. They should answer you within acceptable waiting time. The technicians should have good technical knowledge to solve problems.

Some hosting service providers only offer email support. How can you trust somebody whom you can not reach when you need? Don't waste your time on such web hosts. Go to other hosting companies that offer 24/7 telephone support.

3. looking up the company reputation

You can search feedback and user reviews on a web hosting provider. You can use keywords like "how is xxx hosting", "is xxx web hosting good" to do the research. Some forum website and review website are good resources to help you making judgment. A good web hosting provider gets most positive feedback from their customers. If a web host gets many negative feedback from users, you should put a question mark in your mind. The good reputation is not set up within a short time; it is built up step by step. Good reputation shows the reliability and quality of web hosting services.

Choosing a good web hosting provider is so important for your internet business that you have to make your decision seriously. Good hosting server providers should have solid infrastructure, highest level customer support, and good reputation. Keeping above 3 tips in mind will lead you to the right track.

Jason Chao is an expert in cheap web hosting field and manage a content-rich website of http://cheaphostingchoice.com/, which offers hosting beginner guide, web hosting article, web hosting FAQ, and reviews of free domain hosting, discount hosting, top 10 cheap hosting.

4 Solid Drawbacks Your Free Hosting Providers Will Never Tell You

By Daren Albom

If you are a newbie in web developing and web hosting, chances are you have come across free web hosting before. Perhaps you have some blogs or websites are currently being hosted on free hosting as well. To tell you the truth, there will be drawbacks using free hosting instead of paid service.

Yes you will save up some money for web hosting. However the money you save is far much less than what you lose up. Why say so because by hosting your website on a free web hosting, your site not only is unsecured (uncertain down and up time) you also leave a bad image to your users and visitors. This is because of the reasons below.

Firstly, usually free web hosting will put advertisement on your web hosting. This is how the service providers make money. By putting advertisements here and there within your website definitely give an unprofessional image on your website. Some advertisements like "free smiley" look very spammy and I am sure your visitors will not like it. Further more the advertisements give no money share to you. Hosting on free web hosting is sometimes like building website to help others making money.

Secondly, you get uncertain up and down time. Well I believe some free hosting has a stable uptime but they mostly cannot give you 99.9% uptime like what Hostgator web hosting guarantee. Also when your web site is down, you cannot do anything nor make any complaints. Because you host free with them and you are not entitled to question it. Perhaps you will not have a medium to ask what is happening as well. So if you are having your business hosted there, imagine the losses you could have.

Thirdly, if you are hoping to be ranked in search engine, free web hosting definitely hurts. Of cause I do not know the behind scene of the search engine algorithm but it can be easily seen in the search engine result page that almost none of the websites are hosted on free web hosting. Sites hosted on free hosting just do not rank well. Perhaps to eliminate the possible spam web site in free hosting, search engines eliminate the ranking totally.

Fourthly you will not have much flexibility in free web hosting. You will not get unlimited storage space nor free scripting. You cannot host a lot of data too (in fact you think twice to host important data for the hosting dependability). For most of the time your bandwidth is fixed too. When there are too many users connect to your site, automatically your site will be shut down. And remember you will not have a medium to check what is going on.

These four reasons indeed are the most powerful reasons that you are not encouraged to host with free hosting. If you are serious on your website, then just pay some bucks and get yourself a piece of web hosting. After all the charges nowadays is not that expensive. Easily you can get $4.95/month hosting and it is a very good piece of hosting already with unlimited storage, bandwidth, add on domains and so on.

Daren is a writer and webmaster. His review Hostgator web hosting website provides a better insight on the web hosting leader. For a good quality of web hosting, Daren recommends Hostgator hosting.

Choosing a Web Hosting Provider - 6 Important Factors You Need to Know

By Jason Chao

When you are looking for a web hosting provider, there are many things need to weigh up. The following 6 factors are most important.

1. Price: when you open the home pages of a web hosting website, the most conspicuous item impacts you is the price. They put the lowest price to attract visitors. Normally, there is a little * mark following the big price number. Now you need to find out what conditions this little * will tell you. Look at the bottom of the page, you will see something like, *Applies to new accounts only, Conditions Apply, or * $x.xx /month pricing is available with a 24 month prepaid billing cycle.

2. Money back policy: some web hosting companies offer 30 days money back guarantee, you need to find out and understand full money back policy. The setup fee and domain registration fee (if applicable) are not refundable. Usually there is certain process to cancel your account, like: "you must contact xxxxxxxxx Customer Team, Monday through Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. or via email at moneyback@xxxxxxxx.com".

3. Hosting features: going through the entire hosting feature list, to be sure listed hosting features are good enough for your website. Sometimes the hosting feature is not defined clearly; you need to check out with the web host. If you need to run a software that is not listed, ask the web host if they have the software included in the hosting package and if you are allowed to use it.

4. Customer support: there are ways to test how good the customer support is. Talking with representatives of the web hosting provider is the best way; making a phone call, chatting online, or sending an email. The direct communication always helps you to make a judgment. Many web hosting providers provide support center or help center on their website to help you find most answers.

5. Free domain name: all top 10 cheap hosting providers offer you free domain with their hosting plans. Some web hosts offer free domain for life or free domain forever services that mean you get free domain registration as long as you keep your hosting account with the host. Some hosts offer free domain registration only for first year or initial contract period. When your contract is renewed, you need to pay your domain registration fee.

6. Bandwidth usage: there are some restrictions on bandwidth usage, even some hosting companies offer unlimited bandwidth. Usually they put this condition in "terms of service" section of their website. If you have a high bandwidth usage site, like e commerce site, gaming site, or downloading site, it maybe better to go to dedicated server or VPS hosting.

It is very important to put above 6 items into your web hosting check list. What you eyes tells you is not always truth, because sometimes the truth is hidden somewhere you need to find out.

Jason Chao is an expert in cheap web hosting field and manage a content-rich website of http://cheaphostingchoice.com/

Here is a Quick Way to Justify Your Web Hosting Performance

By Daren Albom

I am sure you have come across web hosting companies that claim to have very good uptime like 99.9%. They will never claim to have 100% because that is impossible to happen for they are dealing with technology that connected together by hundred of other technology to get it operate normally. So if you see somebody claim to have 100% uptime. Just navigate from them and search for the next hosting provider. After all there are tons of them out there.

But even if 99.9%, how do we actually determine they are giving the right uptime? It is kind of impossible to personally guard the website 24 hours a day to make sure it is up and running. How others do is somebody will visit their own website once or twice a day to make sure everything is okay; while some other people will use traffic tracker to check the uptime indirectly. If traffic count drops suddenly without any specific reason then you will know something has gone wrong with the web hosting.

In fact the 2 methods are not very practical and accurate because what if the web hosting goes down for a few times in a day? Traffic count drops but might not be significant. And to make thing worse the dropped traffic is those who will buy. It hurts your business. So this kind of web hosting down time is difficult to trace. The other difficult scenario is what if you have hundred running websites? You will be spending more than half a day just to make sure everything is doing well rather than working on your business.

A simple yet effective way to monitor web hosting uptime is to subscribe to uptime monitor that easily available in the internet. How the tool works is simple. The tool will send a request to your website from time to time (usually 1 minute 1 request). If your web hosting responds in no time, then the web hosting is operating normally, otherwise the tool will record a unit of down time in the report. So the tool will automatically check your web hosting every minute for whole day. You only need to check the report everyday to find out everything.

Usually there are free uptime monitor and paid uptime monitor. Of cause paid service will have a better features and service. However if you do not want to subscribe to paid service yet craving to have a good monitor, a simple way is to search for the web hosting review. This is because sometime the review website has subscribed to those uptime monitor to trace the performance of web hosting and further review them. With that you can enjoy a free service from them. But unfortunately, one thing need your attention is to make sure that your website and the review website are hosting not only just the same web hosting provider but also in the same server in that web hosting company. With that that means you are sharing the web hosting with the review site. This information is easily available in whois. So if you are taking dedicated server then you cannot use this method.

As conclusions, it is utmost importance to make sure the web hosting you got is a quality one. This is because your website and business is 100% dependent on it. If the web hosting goes down, your site follows. So if you realize something is not so right on the providers just change service provider since there are free transfer service nowadays that help to ease the moving.

Daren is a writer and webmaster. His Hostgator web hosting review website provides a better insight on the web hosting leader. For a good quality of web hosting, Daren recommends Hostgator web hosting. Have a look at Daren's Hostgator review.

Bluehost is a Strong Web Hosting Provider

By Russell Blanc

Web Hosting Providers are extremely competitive, and the monthly prices continues to drop, and that is a great thing for all customers alike. And the web hosting companies now need more than just price to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack. One company with great history and experience is Bluehost Web Hosting.

Bluehost Offers Performance

The performance of Bluehost is absolutely outstanding. They separate themselves with a 99.9% uptime which is quite impressive. Also, Bluehost has recently upgraded their plans to offer unlimited web hosting which means unlimited bandwidth and web hosting storage. They continue to maintain their quality servers and are committed to providing web hosting at its best!

Bluehost also offers the ability to host unlimited domains on one account, not to mention a free domain name. This also comes with unlimited parked domains, subdomains and add-on domains. This is a great feature because now you don't have to have 50 accounts for 50 different websites. You can manage all your sites within one account.

Bluehost Has Experience

Bluehost opened its doors in 2003 and continues to grow at a fantastic rate. They specialize in shared web hosting and has recently achieved hosting over 1 million domains. They currently employ over 200 people and are committed to providing solid web hosting to all their customers. Not to mention, they continue to win awards across the internet on numerous web hosting comparing sites.

Bluehost Offers Customer Service

Here is a web host that prides themselves on offering the highest level of support with friendly and patient support staff waiting to address your needs. Their web hosting team has experience and knows what it takes to be the best and understands how critical your website needs are. BlueHost has been providing web hosting solutions to thousands of business and personal web sites since 1996, but actually formed into Bluehost in 2003.

Bluehost hosts over 1,000,000 domains and have reached this milestone because of the quality service offered. What a great success, especially over a small duration of time. Bluehost was officially launched in 2003 and has been growing rapidly ever since.

Bluehost is at the Right Price Point

Bluehost offers shared web hosting at a very affordable price point. The monthly cost for a web hosting plan is $6.95 per month if you sign up for a 24 month or 36 month plan. You can also sign up for shorter durations, however the plan's monthly price does increase a bit. For the numerous features and benefits that Bluehost offers, this price is right on and you should be extremely happy with the services.

Russell Blanc is an expert in the web hosting industry and manages an information-rich web site and user guide about Bluehost Web Hosting.

Factors You Should Look For in the Best Web Hosting Companies

By Ray Higdon

The first factor that should fuel your decision is the amount of web space the web hosting provider can give you. Take into consideration the amount of space your website needs and how much space you will eventually need for future expansion. Secondly, you should also look for FTP access because it is very important for you to be able to upload new pages to your site.

The best web hosting companies will be the ones that will offer you the highest degree of reliability, speed, and security. This is probably the most important factor that you should look for in a web hosting company since this is the most vital one for the success of your online business. A site that is constantly down will lose customers so make sure the web hosting company you are going to work with knows what it is doing. In relation to this, you should also make sure that the web hosting company gives you enough bandwidth for data transfer.

Another factor that you should evaluate for is the dependence and support that a particular company gives you. What good does it give you if you end up frustrated because their technical support isn't available 24/7?

Lastly, pricing should be commensurate to the services that the company offers. Remember, it doesn't always hold true that expensive is the best so before choosing one compare prices as well as features. One example is http://www.greatdealwebhosting.info/ that offers full hosting for only $7.95 for an unlimited number of domain names. That is a pretty good deal versus some of the other offers out there.

Ray Higdon is the founder of the Forever Wealth Club and owner of http://www.FrustratedwithRealEstate.com

Dedicated Web Hosting - Extra Special Benefits That You Can Get From a Dedicated Web Hosting

By Nguyen Hoang

Though there are several types of web hosting accounts, the main decision one has to make is related to dedicated or shared web hosting. One needs proper research to find suitable web hosting according to one's needs. Whether you need a business web hosting or just planning on getting a small personal site, you need to find the perfect web hosting package that can meet your requirements.

In a dedicated web hosting service, the client can hire an entire server that is not shared with others. Dedicated web hosting is considered more flexible than shared web hosting, as it allows the companies to have full control of the server that includes hardware, choice of operating system, etc. Similarly, you can also receive Internet connectivity, monitoring and redundancy measures.

There are several differences between dedicated and shared web hosting, but the basic difference is that in shared hosting different customers share a single web server, while in dedicated web hosting customer can lease an entire server without anyone's sharing. Usually, large professional websites, which have a great deal of traffic, sensitive content and secure e-commerce applications, seek for dedicated server solution.

You can get several benefits from a dedicated hosting and some of them are as follow.

Quick and commanding - dedicated hosting: When you have a dedicated server for your website, your website is able to use all the resource of this server and that's why the response time doesn't impact by the other website and the limitation of your account. The vendor can limit your site usage (on the hardware resource of the server) in shared web hosting and when traffic on the site exceeds this limitation, the site begins to slow down. Similarly, the response time of your website is impacted when there is too much traffic on these shared servers because of other hosted websites.

Protection and Security - dedicated hosting: On Shared hosting servers, information are not as secure and safe as on dedicated server. More often, these dedicated servers provide their own firewall. If there are some sensitive information on your server and you want increased security, a dedicated server should be on your top priority.

Software installation and Flexibility - dedicated hosting: In a dedicated hosting server, you can install the operation system and the software of your choice as you have the full control on the server. Thus, you can get the control and required flexibility for your business.

Quality service - dedicated hosting: More often, a dedicated web hosting company provides better service to the customers than the shared hosting vendors because they don't have an unending list of customers and that's why they focus on every request they receive.

When a project have 'mission-critical' sort of importance and website owners have to concentrate on the design elements and content development of the site, dedicated server hosting is the best choice as you leave all the technical issues to the experts in such sort of web hosting.

However, when a company is new or just has a little presence on the internet, shared hosting is considered quite budget friendly choice. If you are serious about your web, go for dedicated hosting.

Independent dedicated hosting reviews with features by features comparison. Your comment is much appreciated at our dedicated server hosting blog.

Using Free File Hosting Services to Store Files Online

By Marx Lomas

File hosting is a popularly used method for keeping files ready for access anywhere, anytime, without the requirement for a usb drive, hard drive or any removable storage. You have a huge file space of around 1 MB - 300 MB large enough to accommodate lots of pictures, documents, MP3s, documents or any file. You can get your files downloaded by any person with whom you are willing to share.

With file hosting, you can keep your important files online and conveniently access them from any where in the world. File hosting also enables you to share the files with your friends. By availing the free file hosting services, you will get a large space to keep files and document that you require to be shared online with others. Free web space allows you to store the files and free bandwidth enables you to share your files. The file hosting and sharing services earn their revenue by placing advertisements for the visitors of the file sharing site.

Some file hosting services offer you revenue sharing program while using their free services. Under this program, you will get the payment when some one visits your web site for downloading your files. File hosting companies allow you to upload your files, which can later be downloaded by using a premium account or free account. By having a premium account you can download contents and files of a large database that include movies, videos, songs and ebooks etc..

By opting for free file hosting, you eliminate the limitations imposed by email services. Your contacts can download the files uploaded by you by using a link whenever they need. However, for the safety and security of your files, you have to read and understand the terms of the free file hosting services. In the recent years, the hosting services have become very popular due to its increase in demand. Webmasters are using file hosting services to save the cost of disk space as well as bandwidth. To prevent any possible illegal actions, the terms and policies of various file hosting services do not permit uploading of copyrighted materials and documents.

A premium account with a file hosting website provides you more benefits than a free file hosting website. Some of the important benefits are: - download with maximum feed using super fast servers, use of downloading managers like Flashget, DAP and IDM for downloading files, immediate downloading of files without any waiting time, direct download links, extra server slots, downloading without any file size limit and back up of files. Above all, you get a dedicated support from a team of staff who are ready to assist you.

Free file hosting services are very useful for webmasters to store the data in a more efficient manner and save them from any disaster. With so many file hosting and sharing services available for you, you have enough free space for your favorite songs and home videos that you may get while surfing the internet. With a large available free space you are at liberty to store and use whatever you like.

Article by Marx Marx in conjunction with: Turbo UploadThe Premier Free File Hosting and Sharing Service - Sign Up for One of Our Free Unlimted Bandwidth and Downloads Accounts with 2GB of File Storage Space

What Unlimited Website Hosting Really Means

By John Mcdonald

While you may hear the term "unlimited hosting" thrown around in marketing campaigns, it is important to understand that this promise specifically refers to disk storage space and bandwidth. Instead, users may find they have hit a limit of CPU usage - something that has only recently become a problem for web hosting providers. To understand why CPU use is the limiting factor in many modern hosting accounts yet memory is unlimited, it is important to understand a bit about the evolution of website hosting and how internet sites are built.

When website hosting first evolved as an industry, the typical resources that limited a user's account were bandwidth and disk storage. Storage refers to the amount of memory (measured in megabytes and gigabytes) that a user stores on the host server, and bandwidth refers to the amount of memory that is transferred from the host to visitors. Most websites were static pages - some combination of HTML code and low resolution visual objects. Very little programming was done on the server side of the network, and few websites called entries from a database.

The advance of hard drive and broadband technologies led to larger hosting accounts, faster website access, and cheaper prices for individuals building their own domains. The increases also led to dynamic, data-base driven sites becoming more common and popular among webmasters. Programming languages like PHP allow web publishers to create pages that call up templates, user-generated content like comments and forum threads, and other types of functions that require most server-side CPU usage from the hosting provider.

Despite gigabytes of available memory and terabytes of monthly bandwidth allocation, excessive CPU use from a website can slow down or even crash a website hosting server. So when hosts promise unlimited, the fine print will always include a clause about CPU usage and the way it can affect the entire hosting environment beyond your own website. Unfortunately, it is hard to put an exact number on CPU resources like you can with physical memory. Many new webmasters can become frustrated and even angry when they hit this limit and their accounts slow down - or even shut down.

Make sure you're aware of how your website uses server-side CPU processing time. Cache pages when possible, and make sure to choose a hosting plan that was designed with your levels of traffic in mind.

Before signing up for any hosting plan, make sure to read the hosting reviews of people who have used that service before. Also, make sure to find the best hosting coupons and discounts because there is never any reason to pay full price!

Dedicated Servers? Maybe Would Be Good to Have a Nice One?

By Jimmy Woodall

When I heard a conversation about this dedicated server thing. The first time I was wondering what it might be. Then I quickly learned it was an online thing. A dedicated server is not someone who is attentive to you in a restaurant. When you hear the term "dedicated servers" online it usually refers to the type of hosting provider for a website.

If you have started a website, you are probably aware that you must find a host. There are several different types of web hosting available. You can get hosting through a free server. This is usually what people get who want to have a personal web page for friends and family. A free server will most likely put their own ads on your web page so that they can generate income. So if you don't mind that, go for it.

There are also shared servers. A shared server is the logical choice of most businesses starting out on the website. Because internet hosting can cost hundreds of dollars per month, most small businesses choose a shared server so they do not have to invest so much money at the onset of their business.

A shared server can be a good option for a small internet business or a personal website. There is no reason for a personal website owner to have a dedicated server. A small business or personal website can keep costs down if they share the cost of hosting with other businesses.

However, if your business suddenly takes off, or you find that you need a lot more space for forums and shopping carts that your current shared server cannot give you, it may be time to look into getting a dedicated server.

Dedicated servers host only your website. This means that all of the space and bandwidth on the server is yours and yours alone. You do not have to share hosting with other businesses. You can generally make your website as large as you want and include databases such as shopping carts as well as forums, that normally take up quite a bit of space.

This also means that you have total control for the safety of your server and your website. You can add additional features that can make your site even more secure, to the benefit of both your customers as well as yourself.

Dedicated servers usually cost a lot more to maintain. There are different sizes as well as services available for this type of web hosting. When looking at the different options that are available on dedicated servers online, you can generally find everything from larger servers to budget dedicated servers.

Nothing can be worse for an internet business than the following:

- Customers not being able to access the website because there is not enough bandwidth, leading the customer to believe the website no longer exists.

- Customers not trusting the security of the website because last month their credit card information was lifted because the website was not secure.

- A severe limit on the website with regard to space that eventually costs you customers.

All of the above scenarios can be avoided by using dedicated servers instead of shared servers. Dedicated servers add space, bandwidth and security for internet business websites.

The author, Jimmy Woodall, has 49 plus years business experience, and is presently involved in Internet, Affiliate and Niche mktg. You can visit his websites and pick up three free affiliate marketing books http://freegiveaways.jwoodl.com/index.html then make sure you visit his new Dedicated Server site and look around. There is a lot of good information on the subject and its free http://www.jwoodl.com/dedicated-servers

The 5 Things You Should Already Knew About Web Hosting

By Daren Albom

Internet is now no longer connecting just website but connecting human to human. The World Wide Web has become part of our live whether you realize it or not. From net surfing, news reading, match making to online or offline shopping, credit card transactions. All cannot be separated from the internet. That explains why web hosting is never been that important before.

What is web hosting?
Since web hosting is one of the foundations of the internet, do you really understand what it actually is. A simple illustration is your computer. Imagine you home PC with a quad core processors, a few Gigabytes of memory, a server motherboard and an extremely big hard drive. That sounds like a server computer in data centers and the storage space in the hard drive is what we call web hosting. Not forgetting a quality fiber optic connection to the internet access point making the files stored in the hard drive accessible by the world.

What do web hosting company do?
What web hosting providers like Bluehost and Lunarpages do is to provide the storage space in the hard drive. They divide the hard drive into small partitions and let subscribers to store their files and data there. While preparing the storage, they also need to maintain and safe guard the internet connections making sure that no traffic congestion will happen. And in return the subscribers will pay them monthly for the service.

Why am I telling you this?
Knowing that web hosting is important in our live we have to learn more about it. By understand what is it and what the providers do. We can be more accurate in picking up a suitable web hosting for our own.

Why do I need web hosting?
Basically you can do a lot of things with web hosting. One of the most popular things to do is blogging you can either write a hobbyist or a business blog. With hobbyist blog you can share your thoughts and hobby while building up a online network; with business blog you can share your products online and have some customer service there. Besides blogging, you can build an internet business that make money from affiliate programs and Google AdSense or even better you can have your own online store. Also you could use the web space as a data back up centers for your data and files.

How do I get a web hosting
You need to shop for web hosting. When I say shop that means you will need to properly choose a web hosting service. You need to do some surveys on hosting providers. Something need your attentions is that the cheapest hosting doesn't mean the best and also the most expensive one might not suit your needs. Therefore, be smart in the shopping. Know what you want, and look for the things. Always compare and review web hosting services.

I would like to emphasize again that the evolutions of internet is quick. If you would like to be advance in online tech stuffs, web hosting is something you must learn about. If you are going to host your first blog or website, get your own hosting and you will discover a lot more fun with it.

Daren is a writer and webmaster. He review Lunarpages web hosting in his website. For a good quality of web hosting, Daren recommends Lunarpages web hosting.

Should You Use Free Hosting?

By C. J. Smith

Need a place to host your website? If you're looking, chances are you've come upon offers for free website hosting. However, there are definite drawbacks to using a free hosting service.

Other people's ads will be on your space. Many free hosting providers make their money by putting ad space on their client sites.

You won't get a domain name of your own. Most free hosts don't give you a unique name; you're stuck with a subdomain of their own.

You won't show up on search engines. A big drawback of free hosting is that sites hosted for free often don't rank well in search engines.

Free hosting can hurt credibility. To those who know a little about websites, it's obvious when a site is being hosted for free.

You don't get much space or functionality. Most free hosting programs allow you to have only a small number of pages on your site.

Dependability can be a problem. Free hosts aren't always the most dependable. You could get unexplained down time, so your site won't always be accessible.

Free website hosting fits every budget, but you get what you pay for. If you're building an e-commerce business or even putting up a simple website to advertise an offline business, you are much better served finding a paid host. A professional hosting site is a much more solid and dependable foundation on which to build your online reputation. So think about investing in good hosting, and you won't regret that you did.

Chris Smith is sales director for http://www.on365.co.uk a UK based data center Management Company and Server Rooms Specialists. For more information on server rooms see http://www.on365.co.uk/Server-Room-Solutions.aspx

How to Discover Your Website's Uptime

By Bryan Fleming

Have you noticed how most website hosting companies boast 99.9% uptime for their service? They rarely say 100% because nobody can guarantee they'll always be online. But how do you know if you're actually getting what you're paying for?

If you're like most people you probably personally visit your website once or twice per day to see if it's up. If you have many websites you may turn to checking your website's stats. If they appear to "fall" off then you might suspect something is wrong. Both of these cases only really tell you when something's gone horribly wrong.

Wouldn't it be nice to know the second your site goes down? Then you can contact the web hosting company to get them fixing the problem. What if you found out your website was going down several times per day and you never knew about it? You could see an increase in your website's traffic just from fixing a simple uptime problem.

There are free uptime monitoring services on the internet like http://www.InternetUptimeMonitor.com that will actually email an alert the very minute they can't get to your site. Best of all these services usually have a world-wide network of servers that can try your site from different geographical locations and can find an outage faster than you could.

Every website needs to know its uptime. Every Webmaster needs a good uptime monitoring service to know when their website goes down and what their Web host's true uptime is. Do yourself a favor and get a free uptime monitoring service today. You'll sleep better knowing that somebody is keeping an eye on your website.

Bryan Fleming writes about different website hosting topics which include Website Uptime Monitoring, Website Hosting, Website Programming and more.

How to Install SSL - SSL Certificate Tips

By Allen Howard

Who needs an SSL certificate?

If you are going to be accepting or processing secure information from your website, such as credit card payments online, or other sensitive information, you will need an SSL certificate. SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. Data shared between users' computers and the server are encrypted for safety.

There are different grades of SSL certificates. Price ranges from very little money, to hundreds of dollars per year. The more sensitive your information, the more you'll probably need to spend on an SSL certificate.

Important: Most applications can get by with certificates costing less than $100 per year. If you are accepting Credit Card payments directly from the server, you will need to contact your bank or credit card payment gateway to determine their requirements. Some are quite strict.

Server Requirements

Your server needs to have capability for secure connections. This is probably nothing to worry about because most do.

Dedicated IP Address

You will need a dedicated (unique) IP address. If you are on shared hosting plan, you will need to ask your hosting company for a dedicated IP address. SSL certificates cannot be installed on a shared IP unless the certificate is shared. That is not a common scenario at all.

Some hosting companies will move you to a dedicated IP address for free. Others charge a (usually) tiny monthly fee for a dedicated IP address.

What you will need to buy the certificate

You will need to generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). If you've never had an SSL certificate on your site, you may have to generate a "Key" first. These are both done from your server's control panel.

SSL Certificate Purchase and Installation

1. Log on to your server.


2. Generate the key if there is not one already. For SEO purposes, you will want to be consistent. The industry standard is to include the "www." with the domain name.


3. Once the key is generated, then you will need to generate the CSR. Be sure to select the proper key if you have more than one to choose from (The one with the "www." most likely) . Enter the information that the server asks for (Country, city, state, etc.) and the server will display a page with the new CSR on it, or email the CSR to you. Keep that page up, or copy and paste the CSR into a plain text document such as Notepad (Regular word processors such as Microsoft Word may mess it up)
   
   
   A CSR Looks like:
   
   -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----
   
   *** There will be several lines of random-looking characters here. ***
   
   -----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----
   
   
   Be sure to include all the dashes before and after the "begin certificate request" and "end certificate request" when copying the CSR



4. When you buy an SSL certificate, there will be some way to configure the certificate. They will all be a little different, but instructions should be available from the vendor. You will need to paste the CSR into one field, and contact information in as many as three places. You will need to input the owner of the certificate, name, address, email address, etc. For most vendors, the same applies to the technical contact and the billing contact. (These may all be the same person)



5. Once you submit the CSR and contact information, you will need to select an email address for the approval. The certificate signing authority will send an email to the address you choose to approve the transaction. The email address for the approver must be authoritative for the domain or server. A common email address that would be acceptable is admin@mydomain.tld (where "mydomain.tld" is the actual domain that the certificate will be installed upon.) There are many others, such as "webmaster" or "ssladmin" that will work as well; you may need to check.



6. Once the officer approves the certificate, the requester will be sent an email containing the certificate (and possibly a "CA Bundle"). The certificate will look much like the CSR but will be larger. Be sure to include all characters from "Begin Certificate" through (including) the dashes after "end certificate".
   
   A certificate will look something like:
   
   -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
   
   *** There will be several lines of random-looking characters here. ***
   
   -----END CERTIFICATE-----
   
   


7. There are usually two ways to install the certificate. Some servers will require you to paste the certificate (and CA Bundle if applicable) into a field on the server. Some will allow you to upload the certificate from a text file or email on your computer. The server will then install the certificate.

If you've done everything correctly, it should install without problems. If you receive errors or warnings, you may have to contact your server administrator for help.

Allen Howard is the senior Technical Support Representative for InfoServe Media, LLC. InfoServe Media is a full service Houston web design company specializing in small business web design. In addition to superior website design that even a new business can afford, we also offer hosting. If you need an SSL certificate, configuration and installation is included with the price of the certificate. See our website for complete website design and hosting solutions including domain registration and website promotion including Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services and more.

Tips of Finding the Best and Most Inexpensive Web Hosting

By Jeff Glasser

If you happen to be interested in hosting your website you would of course need to find a good hosting service. However, in case your budget is low you would then be forced into looking only for inexpensive web hosting because you would not be able to afford normal hosting rates. You do however need to determine whether the cheapest hosting service is indeed the best option for you and so it will pay for you to delve a little deeper into the subject.

No Free Hosting

For those who do online business it is not recommended that they trust their hosting with a free hosting service because the options available will be limited such as needing to place certain ads on your site in order to pay for the expenses of hosting your website. You can be banned at any time which will lay to waste all the time and effort that you have put in to promote your website, which is another downside to a free hosting plan.

It is far better to look at inexpensive web hosting since at least you won't run the risk of being banned at any time. The fact of the matter is that inexpensive hosting can often prove to be the right option - provided you are able to locate the right web hosting provider.

The first aspect to a good and inexpensive hosting service is establishing the reliability of the hosting provider. Even if you are not paying much for your web hosting, you need to be sure that the service does not let you down as that will cost you a lot in terms of money, lost business as well as reputation and therefore you need to be sure that whichever inexpensive web hosting service you choose; it must be able to provide above ninety-nine percent uptime.

You can also safely choose an inexpensive hosting service that assures you of quality customer support - both over the phone and via email. So that you are able to derive maximum benefit from your online business, the service provider must be able to sort out your problems with minimum fuss and least amount of time.

Finally, even when it concerns inexpensive hosting; you need to ensure that the service comes with proper backup facilities that will help to ensure that your data is always safe - even when things go wrong. Another important consideration for you is finding an affordable web hosting plan and besides the cost; such plan must also fit in well with your hosting requirements for it to be of any use to you.

Though not every inexpensive web hosting service comes with all the features that you need; it pays to opt for one that offers the best and most features that will help you get reliable service and at a cost that you can afford to pay.

Though not every inexpensive web hosting service comes with all the features that you need; it pays to opt for one that offers the best and most features that will help you get reliable service and at a cost that you can afford. View more articles at http://www.webhosting.jsgenterprises.com

Discount Web Hosting Services Are Easy to Find

By Jeff Glasser

There is good news for those who want to run an online website and who have even gone to the trouble of creating a website, but find that their available financial resources don't allow them to use of expensive web hosting services. Discount web hosting services are readily available and many of them are good enough for anyone whose needs are standard and not too demanding. The reason why it is possible to get discount web hosting services is that resellers generally buy web space in bulk from an ISP (internet service provider) and then resell the space to customers at a cheaper price.

There are several different components that make up a discount hosting service. These components in turn allow you, the end user, to upload your files, documents, data as well as other forms of electronically created content in the web space offered at a discounted price and you can do all this in a convenient and cost effective manner. Generally, it also means that software running on the server will run HTTP or Hypertext Transfer Protocol in order to deliver image files as well as HTML pages. In addition, you also can transfer files with the help of software known as FTP or file transfer protocol.

Great Demand

Even though you may not be paying top dollar for your web hosting service, discount web hosting services are still good enough to offer you sufficient amount of disk space as well as reasonably fast transfer speeds to make such packages quite attractive. In fact, because of greater demand for discount hosting there are more and more web hosts mushrooming up that are providing a variety of web hosting plans including discount web hosting plans.

It is advisable that you do an exhaustive comparison of various such plans and use certain criteria in order to properly evaluate each different discount web hosting plan, in order to reap maximum benefits from a discount web hosting package. You therefore will need to look at criteria such as the price, the profile of the web host, level of customer support, especially online support, and you also need to consider scalability before arriving at a decision.

You need to also compare discount hosting packages on the basis of service offered, type of platform (UNIX or NT), space offered, traffic as well as email capabilities. At present, online businesses are booming and there are therefore many businesses that are dealing with ecommerce. So, it follows that these users also need to look around for suitable ecommerce web hosting.

To get the best deal, you will however, need to read up reviews (made by experts as well as by customers) and then do your own comparisons of various discount web hosting plans. Once you find some that suit you, you will then need to grade the best among the many and the one that scores the highest marks should be your pick.

Discount web hosting services are vastly available and many of them are well enough for anyone whose needs are standard and not too demanding. Read more article at http://www.webhosting.jsgenterprises.com

Internet Marketing - Domain and Hosting?

By Lindawati Siedarta

Now, I will explain about domain and hosting like I promised to you in my past article. Do you have email? Absolutely yes, maybe yahoo mail is the most email provider that is used by all of the people. How do you go to your email? First, open your internet browser and you must to type yahoo.com, right? Aha... yahoo.com that's called a domain. So, a domain name is a name given to a collection of network devices that belong to domain which is an administrative space managed according to some common characteristics of the members. The examples are google.com, friendster.com, anne-ahira.net, the-business.cn, and many more.

Oops, I almost forget to tell you about this. Every domain name ends in a top-level domain (TLD) name, which is always either one of a small list of generic names (three or more characters), or a two-character territory code based on ISO-3166 (there are few exceptions and new codes are integrated case by case). Top-level domains are sometimes also called first-level domains. The TLD is like .com (usually use), .net (usually for network), .info, .org (usually for organization), .biz, .name, and many more. Each of them has different price to buy it.

Okay... Now I will explain to you about hosting. To explain this, I will give you an illustration to make it easier to you to understand. You have television, right? How can you make that television become ON? What do you need? Electricity... Yes, you got it! Hosting is the same as electricity. To make your domain can be viewed by another people at World Wide Web (WWW), you need a hosting. Have you understood already?

Hosting also has a lot of types depends on their disk space, bandwidth, server, price and many more. So, you must find the hosting that suitable with what you need.

If you still feel not clear with my explanation, you can contact me, okay. I will pleasure to help you.

Lindawati Siedarta For more information about internet marketing please visit http://www.lindawati.com

Affordable Web Hosting Provider? They're Not Hard to Find If You Know Where to Look

By Bill Sheers

Affordable web hosting services are easy to find. Sometimes it seems like there are a billion out there. So what do you do? You want it to be cheap, but still suit the needs of your web site. Finding an affordable one is not so hard, it can just be a little bit time consuming.

Knowing what you need is always most important. Many different types of hosting are available out there: shared web hosting VPS web hosting or dedicated web hosting The operation system can be Windows or Linux. Their prices are quite different and can be range from $2.95/month to several hundreds dollar per month. Knowing what you need will save you a lot of when looking for a web hosting.

When comparing different web hosting services you will find that many actually offer all the same services. Researching real customer and website reviews is a great way to start. Comparing their price and finding out the best price is something worth doing when looking for an inexpensive one.

Support or service from the hosting vendor is really hard to gauge until you've used it. The cost of changing a web hosting service provider is huge, so, knowing how they really perform is an important thing you should look into before making the final decision. There are many hosting review sites, where you can find the true customer reviews for the different web hosting vendors.

Do your research. It will save you in the end. I know it is a pain to check every single review for every single web hosting services out there. Your website is your 'piece' of real estate on the web. Make sure you get into a good neighborhood.

Affordable low cost web hosting is not hard to find, really! I'm not kidding. And you can find a bunch of places to buy web hosting at this cool website called http://www.affordablewebhostingservices.net - They have done the research for you!

How Managed Hosting Can Help You

By Derek Rogers

In today's busy and competitive industry, down time for companies is just not an option. In the past when a company's CPU failed, that meant big trouble. The time it would take to either replace the CPU or rebuild it had the potential to completely cripple the company. In today's market, there is no time to rebuild or replace and many companies do not even have the option. However, with new breakthroughs companies once scared of rebuilding and replacing no longer have any reason to worry. With new Managed Hosting the worry of CPU failure no longer has to be a nightmare.

Managed Hosting is a safe and reliable way to back up the information from your CPU in the case of a crash or system failure. The SANServe managed hosting system is not only extremely reliable, but is much cheaper than many of the forms of back-up out there today. With the SANServe system you can work at ease knowing that in the case of a CPU failure the Managed Hosting server can 100% backup your CPU and can provide extremely fast recovery for date corruption!

Not only does the Managed Hosting offer backup for your CPU, but it also offers much more. It can provide you with Data Transfer systems, a 24-hour dedicated firewall which will monitor and manage your CPU and other storage systems. It offers Load Balancing, which is beneficial to large and small companies because it allows all the systems to share the same load rather than one machine being overloaded.

With Managed Hosting you are guaranteed 100% uptime, some companies promise that you will have 100% of your network availability or you will receive 10% of your monthly fee back per half day and even up to 100% of the monthly fee! They can also offer a one hour hardware fix, meaning that if your hardware is not fixed within the hour, you get 5% of your monthly fee back! Along with instant system recovery, meaning that if your system is not being worked on in ten minutes and is not fixed in the hour, you get 10% of your monthly fee back! Seemingly most important, they can offer you our year round support.

Now think about it. Your server crashes and you do not have SANServe Managed Hosting. You have no support to call, your hardware is not backed up, your network is not available, your system cannot be recovered and you have clients waiting in your office for their promised information. Can you really afford to lose those clients, or will they be so understanding as to wait another three weeks to get those documents. I would not want to find out! SANServe Managed Hosting is the top of the line back-up system for your top of the line company.

Derek Rogers is a freelance writer who writes for a number of UK businesses. For Business Internet Services and Managed Hosting, he recommends Iconnyx.

Who Else Wants Lunarpages Web Hosting Unbiased Review

By Daren Albom

Lunarpages is a hosting company that just fits everybody. Their basic hosting plan has attractive features that are perfect for building either personal blog or business website. Lunarpages has recently gone unlimited for their storage and bandwidth as well as add on domains. This means subscriber can host as many website as they wish in just 1 account. This is indeed good news for those who plan to have a few websites.

Lunarpages Features

Speaking about the hosting features, their basic plan is not basic at all. In fact it is rather comprehensive with unlimited POP3 email accounts, MySQL databases, different e commerce features and etc. The hosting supports PHP4 and PHP5, PERL, PHYTHON, SSI and etc. Besides, Lunarpages web hosting is compatible with Frontpage and Dreamweaver. With all these features, you can easily come out with some great websites.

On top of the hosting features, the free website scripting is included to enhance the performance of website. Fantastico script library, blog software such as wordpress, content management system, b2evolution and etc are all powerful scripts provided in the hosting. If you are planning to have an auction website, PHPAuction is perfect for you; if you want to have a business customer support section, there are 6 tools available for you; if you want an image gallery, 4Images gallery is available. The list goes on and on. Basically you can have whatever you can imagine with Lunarpages basic hosting.

Lunarpages Performance

As one the leader in the web hosting industry, Lunarpages has very stable uptime. 99% of uptime is what Lunarpages has achieved. They have 4 data centers with 3 located at California and 1 in Nevada. They are separately located in American Internet Services (AIS, San Diego), One Wilshire and Marquisnet, three of the most prestigious buildings in the world. Therefore their servers are considered to be of the highest quality with the facility available in the world top technology building.

Lunarpages Customer Support

Lunarpages has won various awards with their customer supports for their dedication in serving. By providing different kind of supports including email, phone, ticket submissions, forum, live chat and etc Lunarpages has their subscribers fully covered. The various kind of support is one thing, what is more impressive is the response speed of the support on issues. My experiences are great with them. Usually my problems are resolved within a few emails in 6 to 24 hours.

Lunarpages Newbie

If you are a newbie, web hosting and web building is not meant to be rocket science. With the help of technology you can easily build something up. You do not even need to know programming language. If you are not confident enough, you can always have your site built by Lunarpages under the Quicksite plan. This hosting plan includes an up and running website in merely 2 hours after signing up. Of cause the price is higher than the basic plan that I am discussing here.

Lunarpages Pricing

Lunarpages is so far the lowest price hosting that I have come across. With all the above mentioned features, how much do you think they charge for the basic hosting? Make a wild guess. It is only $4.95 per month. This pricing comes with 12 and 24 months plan. Indeed the price is more than reasonable for what you get. Perhaps Lunarpages is promoting hard to fight their competitors now.

As conclusions Lunarpages basic hosting is a good plan no matter for business owners or hobbyist bloggers. Their hosting features are more than enough to build something decent online; their customer support get your back covered; their hosting technology is world class. Albeit they are not as popular as compared to 1 year back, their experiences and background in the industry are solid that definitely could help the subscribers up. Simply search on web hosting review and you can check out Lunarpages web hosting.

Daren is a writer and webmaster. He review Lunarpages web hosting in his website. For a good quality of web hosting, Daren recommends Lunarpages web hosting.

A to Z About Web Hosting

By Justin Knights

When we think about website, we know that we can get to see them when we get onto the internet after we switch on the computer. But how do they get there?

Well, all the websites in the internet need to have a presence in the internet and they are able to get that presence through web hosting. It is like their official parking space on the internet. This is possible via web servers with software that can link to the internet.

The first type of web hosting that we are going to talk about is the dedicated computer system. This system is dedicated to only one website in one computer system. This is known as the simplest way of website system because there is only the whole computer system only has one website. Therefore, the system is dedicated to only one website with consistent software link process that operates the website.

Te second type is the shared platform in web hosting. This gives you the idea that more than one website is being hosted in one computer system. Therefore, the software and management criteria needed for his kind of system is different from the dedicated hosting. However, the basic needs of component for the surroundings for a shared hosting are the same as the one needed in dedicated hosting. For the different websites in a shared hosting, there are ways to arrange the web server with a certain rank.

Firstly, it can use a single pattern file that will contain the information for all the websites in it. The second method is the assign a certain condition in the computer system. The first method will provide much scalability but do not give any indication of one websites effect on the other. Therefore, a combination of both methods is suitable for a shared hosting setting. With this, the system can provide a pattern for website that need little amount of space and provides a limit to websites that demand a large scale of space. Therefore, if there is a website that needs a huge amount of space, it is better of using a dedicated hosting.

For both types of system, no matter dedicated or shared, there is a certain difficulty in managing. Websites could gain polarity and will be more demanded by internet users. When this occurs, the website will need more and more system capital. This is avoidable or manageable if more monitoring is done to minimize the amount of resources used by the website.

If the system resource runs into a dangerous state, it will cause problems to the central processing unit consumption, memory consumption, disk-swap space, disk space, input and output of disk space, input and output of network and internet bandwidth. The capitals of the system will directly affect the performance and the emergence of the exact website.

Shopping for web hosting? Why not let WebHostNinja's web hosting price comparison guides to help you pick up the cheapest web hosting? Article by Justin Knights

What is Web Hosting

By Jim Mahon

Web hosting is essential to the operation of the sites on the Internet. To understand this, it is best to compare it to an apartment building. A hosting company is the building itself. When someone hires a hosting plan, it is as if they rented an apartment from this building for their services.

In addition, in an apartment you can use the space to place your furniture or put everything you need for your company and use it to get to your visitors or customers. In a hosting plan, you can put all of the design files from your personal website or your business, running systems and services to help you communicate with your visitors and customers at all hours, 365 days a year.

There are two different types of hosting.

1) Shared Hosting

2) Dedicated hosting

If you simply want to set up your Website, it is highly recommended to use shared hosting.

You can do the following with shared hosting

-Have your site visible to the public 24 Hr/day, 365 days from anywhere in the world

-Send and receive e-mails in a matter of seconds, with your own email accounts

-Load all kinds of files and share them with your visitors.

-Create communities on the internet, forums, chats, web blogs, video blogs and more.

-Create online stores and shop, open 24 hours, where customers can visit from any country in the world.

Among many other features....

Things you should consider when choosing a web hosting package.

1) Monthly cost

2) Tools supplied by web hosting company

3) File types supported with the particular hosting package

4) Amount of email accounts provided

5) Good Customer service from Reseller Company

6) Server space and bandwidth space

Of course, there are many more features supplied with each hosting package but these six above are the most important

Space and Transfer:

If you are going to hire a hosting plan, it is very important that you take into account the space and transfer you will be using, since it is not the same to upload a small site than a large site. A greater number of files, email accounts, databases and so on must move to bigger web hosting plans. However, if this is the first time you are looking for hosting and do not know how to estimate these two data transfer sizes, do something simple. If you have, the website designed, checks the weight of the files and calculate the space needed. Once you have that information choose the plan which the space comes closest to your needs (note that the hosting plan chosen should have a little more space to the weight of your files).

The good news is that we have done all the research for you on our web hosting comparison site. We have much research and in turn reviewed the top five hosting companies on the internet

Now you have found out why it is so important to choose the correct hosting company for your website, click on Web Hosting Comparison to find reviews of the top 5 hosting companies on the internet

Why Shared Hosting is Best For WordPress Blogs?

By Dipankar Roy

WordPress is a script written in PHP that allows users to have an online personal or business journal style website. With WordPress, readers of your blog can comment on your latest blog posts. It needs a MySQL database to store the user data and a minimum disk space.

Now choosing the hosting provider for your WordPress blog is the most important job. WordPress itself provide a free hosting service for blogging. Also there are many free blog hosting and web hosting providers. But there are limitations for your blog, such as design, templates, add-ons etc. The main feature you need for your blog is the fantastico script installer, which must contain the latest version of WordPress.

As you don't need a huge amount of space and a large number of databases, shared hosting is best for your WordPress blog with your own domain. You don't need to be familiar with HTML to create your site, as there is an automatic installer of WordPress within the fantastico, which will you, find within your hosting control panel. The hosting provider also helps you in these situations. As an example in my company, if any customer places a ticket to install the WordPress and make all the things ready for him, we will do it with pleasure and it will take just 5-10 minutes to ready the website for him.

With the WordPress hosting you can only edit the header image of your blog and can use selected themes provided by WordPress. In paid hosting, you have the total control to your site. You can add as many pages you wish, can edit the pages also can edit the template; add different add-ons from the WordPress control panel. You could find different theme of WordPress and download them for your blog, unzip it and install to your own site.

If you wish to put Google-ad in your site, you can add that particular script from the file manager option in your control panel. You can define where the ads should be placed. This is not possible in wordpress. You also can optimize your site for search engine to put different Meta tag in the header file. In word press it is only possible by using different related tags. So if you need full freedom for your site and keep control in your hand then shared hosting is the best option.

I have worked in ComfortHost, where I have lot of experience in WordPress or blog hosting. ComfortHost offers quality web hosting with preinstalled WordPress. Dipankar Roy ComfortHost.net

Hosting - Certain Things to Remember

By Tem Balanco

As far as hosting goes, many different options exist that you can select. The only thing is that you must take care since it might prove to be a really costly decision if it is not made correctly. By attempting to understand the basic features that are related to the hosting plan, you'll be a little closer to choosing the ideal one which is based on your needs.

The most frequently used hosting is the shared one. In this shared type, you will be sharing a particular server with several other web sites. This is a very economical option and you will receive all different kinds of bandwidths as well as disk space in order to suit most of the web sites.

If you opt for a reseller account, you may find yourself earning a bit of extra cast. With this capacity, you can rent out hosting to other people, and you will find this makes it cheaper for you.

If good revenue is provided then you will enjoy a fast service. For those that have a smaller budget, an option is to buy another person's reseller hosting plan. It is a budget wise decision on the condition that they are the median person.

The shared option requires that you keep an eye on your usage. If you surpass the stipulated allowance then you'll have to pay extra money to cover those actions. If you choose to upgrade your plan, you'll have extra space and will not need to worry about your usage.

If a shared plan makes you uneasy, a semi dedicated server is another option. Although they cost more, there is a perk of sharing with a lower amount of people. Another perk is the larger bandwidth allowance and disk space.

Because of this, they're more proper for bigger sites. They also give you more security along with more privacy, as the number of people on the server are fewer. The customer service is much better, too, as they might not have a lot of people attempting to contact them with issues.

In terms of web hosting, a number of options exist from which to choose. But be cautious since this choice may prove costly if you are not careful. If you make an effort to understand the basic features of the different options you'll be that much closer to selecting the one that best fits your needs. The most common type of is shared, where you share a given server with different online sites. This option is more affordable than the other kinds and it offers a variety of bandwidth sizes and also disk capacity suitable to the majority of websites.

What You Need to Know About Adult Web Hosting

By Teddy Low

Apparently adult contents appearing on the Internet is no longer a secret. As a matter of fact, adult content (namely, porno) has always been around since the Internet is invented. It's nothing wrong about surfing or hosting an adult website as long as you're obeying the cyber laws.

To run an adult website, you'll first need a hosting service that is willing to accept adult contents. Also, a few other consideration points when it comes to adult website is the hosting storage capacity, bandwidth, hosting uptime, and pricing.

As you might be aware, the mechanism behind an adult web host has nothing much different from a normal web hosting. Nevertheless, there area few issues requires your extra attention due to different nature of adult web users.

Bandwidth - you will need huge bandwidth for an adult website, mainly because adult website involves more in image hosting and files downloading.

Disk storage - Disk storage is another important issue for adult web hosting due to the same reason - excessive image hosting. In case you are storing your porn images and videos in your own hosting, you will need a really huge space to host all those data. A cheap but yet huge disk storage space is indeed very much needed for any adult website.

Dedicated server for adult websites

From what we can see, a dedicated server sounds like a good option for adult website in many aspects. You'll get better data organization and flexibility. However if you wish to keep your clients details in private (as it is an adult website), an own managed servers or co-location server is essential. With this kind of hosting, the hosting company will connect your computer or your hardware to the internet. They also provide a secure environment, rack space and technical support. What you have to do is to provide the hardware like the server, the software and the maintenance for all the equipment used in hosting your own website.

Wrapping things up, when you are hosting an adult website, you need to sit on your users shoes and think about the website usage. To success, a strong and reliable hosting server is a must.

Well that's it about adult hosting. In case you're looking for something different than that, I would definitely suggest newbies to spend more time in studying customer reviews and feedbacks before purchasing any web hosting service. As for my recommendation, Blue Host is one of the top rated hosting companies and you should have a look on them. To read further on Bluehost review, visit BluehostSecretRevealed.com Article by Teddy.

Potential Drawbacks of a Shared Web Hosting

By Teddy Low

Apparently not every one of us is rich enough to hot our website on a dedicated server. This explains why web hosting on shared server are still the most popular service around the Internet. However, being most popular does not mean being the best. Shared hosting are often problematic and it limits your website in achieving greater heights.

Of course I am not saying that all shared hosting servers are bad - it's just that you need to pay extra attention when it comes to picking up the right shared hosting service. Here are some of the potential downsides if you are stuck with a lousy web host.

Web Host Reliability

The biggest problem with shared hosting is always the server reliability. As your websites are share-hosted with dozens of other websites, you will have little control on the usage of server resources. You will never know when your website is going to be down as there might be buggy scripts running on your server, or your web host is overselling without proper planning.

Billing System

Shared hosting often involve extra upgrade costs. Inexperienced webmasters often give away their money to unethical hosting companies in exchange of nothing. It is important for us to choose a host with transparent billing policy.

Limited Addon Domains

Shared hosting companies, especially the small ones are normally incompetent when it comes to hosting features. Do not get ripped off by lousy shared hosting provider that offers you between one to five addon domain names. Always go with the reputable hosting companies (example, Bluehost and Lunarpages) that offer unlimited addon domain capacity.

Poor Technical Support

You can consider switching web host if you found out that your web host is not updating the web applications efficiently. Most shared hosting service providers are not too dedicated in supporting software upgrades and features maintenance. A hosting service, for example, that only supports PHP3 in nowadays is totally unacceptable.

Well these are a few things to be listed in your check list when shopping for a shared hosting. Study and research well before signing up, an affordable yet reliable service is very possible.

Last piece of advice: In case you are looking for the right hosting, try check out Hostmonster. They are one of my favorite hosting services and I think they rocks! At the time of writing, Hostmonster is on promotion, you can check out their pricing and hosting features here. Article by Teddy

How to Know If a Web Hosting Service is Reliable?

By Teddy Low

Server reliability is always one of the major factors for a good hosting. What is the use of a web hosting company if they fail to keep your website online 24/7? It is not difficult to get a web hosting company that guarantee 99% server uptime. In fact, they are all over the Internet - but does every one of them offer such high server uptime? I bet it's not.

Yes, we all know that it's important to have a reliable hosting but how do we know that if we have found one? Well there are several ways to do so: one is to track the hosting uptime by using a third party system; secondly we can always ask for a trial period on the web hosting.

There are various systems found online to monitor website uptime and most of them are free of charge. Uptime Auditor, for example, is a nice piece of tool for those who wish to track their hosting server uptime.

On the other hand, having your own first hand experience with the hosting is always the best way to verify the server reliability. Always go with the web host that offer trial period and track your website uptime closely for the first 30 days. If you found anything fishy about their service, you can always walk away with a full refund on the server cost. There are also some hosting companies that are willing to offer a pro-rated refund even if you had exceeded the trial period.

Other steps to avoid a lousy hosting

Besides tracking on its uptime and testing the service yourself, a few other methods to avoid a lousy hosting include reading real customer feedback and posting consumer questions on web hosting related forums. Also, shoppers are always advised not to pay upfront for more than six months when dealing with an unfamiliar hosting company.

Last piece of advice: In case you are looking for the right hosting, try check out Hostmonster hosting. They are one of my favorite hosting services and I think they rocks! At the time of writing, Hostmonster is on promotion, you can check out their pricing and web hosting features here.

Last piece of advice: In case you are looking for the right hosting, try check out Hostmonster hosting. They are one of my favorite hosting services and I think they rocks! At the time of writing, Hostmonster is on promotion, you can check out their pricing and web hosting features here Article by Teddy.

Preparing For Server CoLocation Deployment

By Sam W Lee

Administrating a server or multiple servers can be a significant responsibility especially for any business with no previous experience of operating IT infrastructure from remote locations. There is a need to understand how to remotely access the machine and whether such methods are time and cost effective.

Choosing a suitable operating system is essential. For example, UNIX based operating systems, such as Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD are developed to be administered remotely while windows operating system are less so and often require a GUI. If this is the case, be ready to spend the time learning the software and also accepting the additional expense.

If you are taking the responsibility in supplying the server to your web hosting provider to colocate it is important to find out what type of equipment they can store as they often offer space in rack unit metrics. Certain colocation providers will limit the type of cases the machine to minimize space and make efficient use of its data centre spacing. Normally, low cost servers are designed to be housed in tower cases so beware when purchasing to try and get pre-built rack mountable servers that will save you money over the long term.

In regards to the purchase of the server, most colocation providers require contracts. This is can be a double edged sword since if the service is below par; it can be costly to break out of the legal binding agreement. So before signing the contract, study the contract from top to bottom several times. Look for key components such as a SLA (Service Level Agreement). SLA is legal assurance that the co-location provider must maintain services at a level which is satisfactory to all the parties involved (in particular as you are the client). Relevant issues may include a 99.9% uptime guarantee for the network and support response turnaround times of no more than 2 hours. If you are uncomfortable with the contract (or the SLA) then shop elsewhere.

Colocation does require higher overheads in the form of maintenance and maintaining a web hosting environment that is secure. For example, tasks including system administration to keep the applications up to date and system/network security are two important areas that need constant monitoring. This can also be time consuming. If done properly patches should be tested out on a non production machine before being put on the live server or system. And a degree of technical knowhow is required to ensure things run smoothly. The monthly cost of colocating a server can vary from around $79 upwards in terms of paying an uplink provider but can be a lot more in terms of time taken to ensure your system runs smoothly in complex setups. If you don't have the confidence, then outsource to someone who does or move to a managed server hosting solution.

Sam Lee is an IT consultant based in London and works closely with web hosting companies in a range of applications. To learn more about web hosting requirements for your business or website, please visit http://www.hostbyte.com

Web Hosting Solutions For Small Businesses

By Quinlan Murray

There was a time when businesses literally moved at a snail's pace. Limited modes of communication and the difficulty in getting fresh news off the press contributed to this.

At that time, the telephone was the fastest means of communication and the Internet had not been born. But, with the arrival of the Internet, the face of world business underwent a revolutionary change. Emails, mobile phones and instant online interaction have become the order of the day, taking business to giddy heights.

Of course, the single most contributing factor to this was the ease and speed with which communication could flow from one end of the world to another. So, obviously, communication is vital to the growth and development of any business

It is in view of this that an online presence has become necessary for all businesses, big and small. However, many small businesses that go online take the jump without a clear idea of their needs. As a result, they end up paying through the nose for services that they hardly use.

If you own a small business and you want to take it online, what are your hosting needs?

When it comes to website hosting, there are three main divisions: shared hosting, dedicated hosting and Virtual private hosting services. Which one of these should you use?

Size matters: Unless your company has stated generating huge traffic or you see the urgent need to expand, it is better to start with a shared hosting package. These are inexpensive packs and they typically comprise of all the features a start-up company needs. However, it is important to remember that shared hosting has some drawbacks. Since you will be sharing the server with other clients, you may experience small outages or lack of speed at times. But, instances such as these are quite rare. Besides, there is always the option to upgrade.

If your business is already pulling a large number of dedicated customers and you expect your business to expand dramatically, you are better off with a virtual private server. These are slightly more expensive but show high quality performance. Dedicated servers are for big businesses that will be depending on their online presence to bring in huge revenue.

Features: Before you choose the ideal hosting plan for your business, identify the features that your visitors will look for. These days, you have a variety of products like Forums, blogs, email accounts and other products that you may want to offer your customers. Make sure that your host supports all the services you want to offer.

Fortunately, many hosting service providers have packages for small businesses, that help to take the guesswork out of what you will need. These packages generally contain everything that you would typically need for your site. Many of them have tools that help you build your site from scratch and establish your web presence strongly. Rates vary according to your bandwidth consumption and services you opt for. To identify the best providers, compare and contrast services. Read customer reviews, testimonials and ask for references. These great resources will help you find just the right hosting provider for your needs.

At 24Shells, we see Web hosting as the engine for growing a small and medium size business and provide you with affordable Web Hosting solutions.

What Do You Need From a Web Hosting Package?

By Mark Bellinger

Web Hosting Packages

The first consideration for most people when looking at a hosting package is cost. However whilst this may be true, many people are also wary of the "cheaper hosting packages" as they may seem to offer little in the way of added value not to mention the perception of poor support & reliability.

So ideally you really need a hosting package that combines low cost with high standards in terms of up time, reliability dependability & value.

Therefore the above criteria should be non-negotiable when it comes to selecting a hosting package to support a professional web presence - but where can such an animal be found?

First of all let's identify the things you do not want from a web hosting provider

• Down Time - Not only will your site be down & unavailable to site visitors, but your email will also not be functioning. The consequences of this happening are obviously dire & extended or frequent periods of down time will not happen with a reputable web host.
  
• Poor or Non Existent Support - 24/7 Email or telephone support is of vital importance because if its not there when you need it most, for instance when your site is down, your stress levels will go through the roof.
  
• No Regular Back Ups - Unfortunately hard disc failures do happen & without regular back ups, you will have to re upload all your files & images - however with no backups of your own you will have no website - nothing!
  
• No Added Value - With most web hosting packages you would at least expect to get added value features like free templates & shopping carts etc.

Just be aware that whilst the above pitfalls are often associated with cheap hosting packages they can also be present with the more expensive packages - so pricey does not necessarily mean top quality.

So What Are the Minimum Requirements That You Should Expect Form Any Web Hosting Package?

Well it should be easy to secure at least the following from any web host worth their salt;

• 24/7 Support
  
• Free Website Builder
  
• Free Website Templates
  
• Free Easy Install Scripts

So whilst making sure that your web hosting package includes at least the above value, you still need to ensure that you don't fall prey to an unscrupulous web hosting company that falls short of it's promises.

Some victims of shabby web hosts have lost year's worth of work, customer databases and other valuable information - in other words a web hosting company that turns nasty could cost you your business.

Therefore if you come across a hosting package that is both cheap & has all the bells & whistles, just make sure that you do some research in terms of the company's track record & profile before signing up with them - it could be the best (or the worst) hosting deal you will ever get.

Read about our Web Hosting Package of choice here. Mark Bellinger, a university graduate, is a successful businessman and entrepreneur exploring internet business opportunities here.

Compare Managed Web Hosting With Unmanaged Web Hosting

By Justin Knights

This is an article to help you decide on choosing either an unmanaged or a managed web hosting server. To find out which is more suitable for you, you have to make certain comparisons. However, different providers will provide different quality of service. All aspects such as the location of the company, the mother provider company, power supplies and research all plays a part in the performance of the hosting company.

For an unmanaged hosting, you or your company will be in charge of taking care of its service. You must also take care of the software maintenance yourself. This type of server will prove to be full of hassle because you will need a 24 hour team to monitor servers.

Therefore, there will be extra cost to hire additional employees or staff to be around to duty around the clock to ensure that your server is being monitored. So, you can draw a conclusion here that any situation that does not require the server to be at a stable situation will be okay for an unmanaged hosting. If you have the money to hire a team of staff to monitor your servers, then you might suggest that the unmanaged hosting is no problem at all.

For the situation where you are using a new server and that server need to stay online at all times, a managed web hosting should be your only choice. Managed web hosting even comes with updates, security patches and 24 hours seven days a day of support. The data centers will take care of everything for you for a very reasonable fee.

The difference between the unmanaged and managed hosting is cost is not much if you only have one server. However, if you have more than one server to look out for, you may consider unmanaged hosting a hard choice to make unless you have a server management team that will work for you in all times to give you the reliability. Just compare the cost to see which one is a smarter and better choice.

Looking for affordable web hosting? Then you can't afford to miss WebHostNinja's hosting price comparison guides. Compare more than 600 hosting pricing and features and get the best hosting package now. Article written by Justin Knights.