Testing Web Hosting Companies

By Bob Willis

So you have reached the final stages of the web hosting selection process and you need to now select from the finalists. While you have done most of the spadework in terms of research and lapping up on relevant information, it is always advisable to test these companies and then compare their features, prices and support system as a whole. It is now time to test the finalists and since you only want the best for website, delve a little deeper and you would be on your way to finding the right web hosting company for your website.

Start by sending out emails or queries through their "client support email system" and ask them whatever concerns or queries you may have about their services, features, prices etc. You can find out more about the company on their "about us" page. Verify the given information with reliable reviews, testimonials or hosting directories.

Validate their contact information through their "contact us" page and call or email them in order to verify the validity of their contact information.

Remember, the amount of time it takes to receive a response from the host will determine the quality of customer support they offer to their customers. Send your query or email to different companies at the same time and then perform a valid comparison. Also ensure that the mail sent out on a weekend is timed as well. A time evaluation response of anything under 6 hours can be considered as a positive sign.

Next thing to consider is the quality of response delivered by the host. Is the response accurate and include all relevant information requested by you? Also ensure that the answer is well structured and explains all the jargons without making it sound gibberish to the novice ear.

Also, go through their website and read their terms and conditions and service agreements in its entirety. Reading the fine print is imperative in order to assess and compare their various rules and regulations as well as the hidden costs involved, if any.

Furthermore, do a little research on the history and reliability of the host. Search for unbiased reviews and testimonials; get involved in discussion forums and blogs. This would give you a better idea about the performance levels and services offered by the hosting company.

If all this still makes you feel a tad unsure, you could always sign up for their free hosting package and then analyze their services. Remember however that free hosting packages offer limited services, support and features and is only a good idea if your website can run on its restricted features.

Beware of companies that are trying to lure customers into "unlimited bandwidth and disk space". These types of advertisements are usually deceptive and come equipped with other hidden costs or limitations.

It is only wise to perform a thorough research on the given host and compare various features and tools of their packages with other hosts. This way, you would be in a better stead to handle the selection process and thereby make a well-informed decision.

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Does Website Hosting Affect Google Rankings

By Bob Willis

Once you have created a snazzy looking website, it is time to host it on the World Wide Web and you are ready to receive website traffic. But the important aspect to be pondered upon before selecting a web host is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Most web owners usually overlook this aspect and are more focused upon hosting features, tools and pricing structures. That said, the latter too plays an important role in selecting a web host.

So the question that comes to mind is that "does choosing a web host make a difference in rankings on the search engines?' Many people tend to believe that a unique IP address is required for a website to rank higher on the search engines. But it is important to take into account the fact that most websites are hosted on shared IPs. On a single computer many servers run side by side and serve different domains from single IPs.

The seemingly "cheap" web hosting companies may also be hosting spammers, scam sites or other banned sites like gambling or porn. Now this could considerably affect your website search engine rankings.

If there is virtual shared IP hosting on the server, and Google penalizes the server and IP due to spamming, then chances are that your website could also be banned or otherwise penalized. In another instance, if your website is housed on a server that is hosting adult content, then Google can ban both websites. Therefore, your website visibility is at risk.

However, this is not always the case as your website need not be banned because of a blacklisted server. Secondly, please note that Google does not ban sites by virtue of their sharing an IP address with a misbehaving site. As Craig Silverstein of Google quotes in a recent interview "Actually, Google handles virtually hosted domains and their links just the same as domains on unique IP addresses. If your ISP does virtual hosting correctly, you'll never see a difference between the two cases. We do see a small percentage of ISPs every month that misconfigure their virtual hosting, which might account for this persistent misperception."

The web owner therefore needs to ensure that their website is receiving maximum uptime (up to 99.9% to 100%). Also ensure that your web host carries a clean track record.

Domain selection is another factor that can affect the rankings of your websites on search engines. So for a United Kingdom website, a .uk domain name is suitable and for a top level or global domain, a .com domain is viable. So a UK based cosmetic company would naturally rank higher on the search engines.

URL restructuring is another important aspect as search engines face problems while indexing dynamic URLs. If the URL parameters are acceptable with Google, then your website should easily be indexed with them.

So remember that Google may penalize certain web hosting companies due to content issues and this could negatively affect the performance of your website. Also, prefer individual IP addresses in order to obviate probable index removal. So choose your web host wisely and thereby safeguard your SEO plans.

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Common Website Hosting Terms Explained

By Bob Willis

The Internet is the fastest growing form of media and features over 50 million websites and this superhighway only seems to be getting busier with its ever-growing expansion. The huge number of websites active on the World Wide Web has created a huge demand for the emergence of web hosting companies. To the novice player, find the right web hosting company could come across as a daunting task. It therefore becomes important to become equipped with the basics of web hosting business including the industry jargons or terminology used in the hosting industry.

An amateur web master may not be familiar with the common web hosting terms and this could make the selection process quite complicated. Listed below is a glossary of hosting terms that would help you figure out what's what in the web hosting industry.

Alias:

Aliases are used to identify different email accounts and can also redirect the mail to other POP3 accounts or to other folders within the same email address. A catch-all alias can be used to process e-mail from unknown senders, and is often known as a "junk-mail" sorter.

Auto-Responders:

While auto-responders are not email accounts in themselves, they are assigned an email address and it auto-respond to anyone who sends them an email. The reply is a pre-formatted email and every response is identical to the corresponding queries or concerns.

Bandwidth:

Bandwidth is a term used to describe the amount of data that can pass through a communications channel (such as an Internet connection) in a given period of time. Bandwidth is often measured monthly.

Browser:

A browser is a program that allows access to the web visually by allowing requests from special files known as HyperText Markup Language. The Internet Explorer program from Microsoft is the most popular among other browsers.

Client

A client is a computer program that can download files for editing, run applications, or request application based services from a file server.

Dedicated Hosting:

Dedicated hosting is an ideal option for websites that receive high amounts of traffic. The user gets access to an entire server with the dedicated hosting service and has access to all its resources.

DNS:

DNS stands for "Domain Name System" and facilitates easy differentiation between different institutions like .com, .us, .ca etc.

Domain Parking:

Domain Parking refers to when individuals or companies buy the domain names before they are ready to use them.

FTP:

File Transfer Protocol governs the transfer of files between computers over a network.

Gigabyte:

A gigabyte is a unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,024 megabytes. One Gigabyte (Gb) is equal to about one billion bytes (230 bytes).

HTML and HTTP:

HyperText Markup Language is a computer language used to structure the text and multimedia documents of a website as well as create hypertext links between electronic documents.

HTTP or HyperText Transfer Protocol is used to request and transmit web pages and web page components over the Internet or other computer networks.

ISP:

This is an acronym for Internet Server Provider

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Basic Features of a Web Hosting Plan

By Bob Willis

Web hosting plans come outfitted with varied features, tools and functionalities in order to cater for diverse needs and budgets. In this article, we would be discussing the basic features of a web hosting plan and which features and tools are best suited for your website. This will help you determine and ascertain the type of hosting plan that befits your website needs.

Disk Space: Disk space is the amount of space offered by the hosting provider to store all your files. Here it becomes important to determine the exact amount of disk space that your website would require. Different web hosts offer different amounts of disk space for individual hosting plans. It is advisable to have an estimate of your disk space requirements. Try to ascertain as to how much space you would require for storing your email, web files, databases and log files.

Once you get a breakdown of these figures you would be in a better stead to work out the disk quota required for hosting your website. It is important to note here that certain we hosting providers would also include email and/or logs in the quota. This could make your disk storage estimate a tad difficult. Therefore always keep a safe margin in selecting your disk space since your email and log file needs could change as your website grows.

Email Accounts

Email accounts are a common and essential feature offered with hosting plans. While with some hosts, you may wield control over mail settings, putting restrictions on mail activities (for example the number of accounts or maximum size of mail boxes) on the server side, other web hosts would do the entire set up for your account. There are essentially 4 types of email accounts including POP3, forwarding, aliases and auto responders. How you wish to configure each is of course a matter of preference.

FTP Access

Most paid hosting accounts come equipped with the FTP access feature. These FTP programs allow the users to upload files and to edit and delete the content more quickly and conveniently as compared to the web-based interface. In fact, hosts also offer the option of creating one's own FTP accounts. This is a highly utilizable feature if you wish to share your web space while keeping the user files separate from your own or if you want someone help you on your website.

Bandwidth

This is one vital feature that needs to be taken into consideration when selecting your hosting package. Choosing the right amount of bandwidth is imperative for the growth of your website. A wrong decision here could either make or break your website. The amount of bandwidth or data transfer differs depending on the type of website you own. Therefore the requirement varies and this explains why web hosts make different hosting packages available. Once you have a rough estimate of the amount of bandwidth required for your website, make sure that it suits your monthly hosting budget. For this one also needs to ensure that the company has mentioned all prices in a clear format and there are no hidden costs involved.

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Two Web Hosts Are Better Than One

By Michael Collins

You probably think its crazy to use two different web hosting providers. I used to think so too. IAfter all, most shared hosting plans give you tons of disk space and bandwidth and they allow you to host as many domains as you could ever need. Why should you pay twice the price if one gives you all you'll ever need?

That's what I used to think. Then I suffered a painful lesson that taught me never to put all of my eggs in one basket again.

When I first started building web sites I didn't have a lot of money to spare so I was very careful with my expenses. I chose an inexpensive shared hosting plan with a provider that had a good reputation. For a long time things went smoothly and I never had any problems at all.

But then it happened. My web host's server crashed and all of my sites were down. And while they were down my revenue grinded to a halt. It took several calls to their customer support line to find out what was going on and all they could tell me was that the problem was not on my end. There were lots of sites down and they were working hard to get them back up as soon as possible.

It ended up taking them a week to get things back to normal. All of my sites were down that entire week. If anyone tried to visit them they got a "Page Not Found" error and probably thought the site was gone for good. Any advertising links that were providing me traffic were sending them to a lousy error page and there was nothing I could do about it. I didn't make a dime all week long.

But oh boy did I learn my lesson! As soon as my sites came back up and I had verified that all was back to normal I opened another hosting account with a different provider and moved half of my sites to their server. I'm no longer putting all of my eggs in one basket. If one of them crashes all I have to do is redirect my sites to the other host's server and I'll be back in business in no time.

Sure it costs me a little more each month, but hosting is so cheap these days that its foolish not to have a backup plan with a secondary host.

If you're not sure which host to use, check out http://webhosting.youcompareit.com where you can read actual customer reviews, complaints, and ratings of all the most popular hosting providers.

Shared Hosting is a Great Choice For a First Website

By John Mcdonald

Choosing a website host might seem to be a confusing and intimidating process for first time web publishers. Before even evaluating and comparing hosting companies, one must consider the types of website hosting available, the costs, and exactly what their new websites will require. If you are new internet publisher and unsure of what exactly you'll need, shared hosting is probably a good place to start.

Shared hosting services host multiple webmaster accounts on a single server. Since different websites only access the computer's resource at specific times, shared hosts can usually deliver large amounts of resources to each site over the course of the month. Smaller websites and new websites rarely have a problem with shared hosting, but if a site gets too big it can start to become a problem for other sites on that particular server. Since shared hosting is optimal for lower traffic sites, it is an extremely cost-effective way to get a website online and a great choice for first-time webmasters.

Many shared hosts also include CPanel or a similar user interface. File management, domain controls, and even visitor statistics can be accessed through any web browser and actions can be performed by clicking on corresponding icons or filling out web forms. Typically, a shared host will provide scripts and automated installation programs that can help novices and pros alike create functional and dynamic websites with just a few clicks and customization options. Since the hosting companies are looking to attract smaller websites and newer webmasters, they also want to make sure the actual process of building the website is accessible for new webmasters.

Eventually, a successful website will grow so large that shared hosting isn't a viable option any more. At that point, it will be quite possible to take the data and the domains from one account and set them up at another hosting plan. But when you're just starting out, shared hosting is probably the way to go if you want to keep costs low and have access to a powerful interface that's also easy to use.

Always read hosting reviews before making a decision on a website hosting service. Many make great promises, but a quality website host will have some people who have actually tried it that can shed some light on the reality of the product. Also, be sure to look for hosting coupons so you get the best deal possible. These Dreamhost coupons can be used to get discounts or even customize shared hosting plans with Dreamhost.