Web Hosting D2B

A Search For Cheap Web Hosting

2008-11-28T12:06:00.001-08:00

By Menno Spijkstra

If you think web hosting is an expensive luxury nowadays, think again. The perennial presence of web hosts available in the market paved the way to cheap web hosting. It is not too difficult to find inexpensive providers in this competitive market if you research carefully. Website hosting is an internet hosting service that allows its users to store any kind of information like images and videos. You might have a notion that cheap web hosting would mean compromise in quality. That is not so. There are many inexpensive hosting providers with excellent capacity, quality, and security.

So, how do they come up with very low prizes? Simple, the expenses for budget hosting is being split to a huge number of users that results to the users paying only a fraction of the entire expense. Since there are hundreds of inexpensive services that offer affordable hosting solutions, you should not be easily swayed by their rates. You deserve to get the best hosting service. You have to make sure that their services will satisfy your requirements. It will be useless if you employed their services but in the end, they will not be able to give you quality service that you expect. You have to research about these companies that provide cheap web hosting before you purchase a long term web hosting plan.

Otherwise, you will be left in the wilderness, wandering and looking for another inexpensive website hosting company. You have to know the fact that there are many companies offering limited and mediocre services. That is why getting a professional and reliable trouble free hosting company is a must. One way to verify a company's performance record is by making a background check thru customer feedback. You can also judge an inexpensive web hosting provider through their rankings in independent surveys. An extra effort in research will surely do no harm.

One aspect that you have to also consider is the levels of support that these service companies can give you. Some companies that offer low rates are actually not responsible in maintaining their own server equipment. What they do is, they sometimes provide dedicated server via another web host. Thus, another hosting company actually maintains their server. If you are comfortable with this kind of set-up, then go ahead. Otherwise, look for another low budget hosting company that has total control over their server equipment. You must also check the available disk space from your prospective provider.

While doing your research, you might be torn among hosts that are similarly reputable and offer the best services at a good deal. Making the right choice will save you money on web hosting services and tool. Keep in mind that it is only you who can decide which economical hosting provider offers the best hosting services, tools, and features at a price that is ideal for you. When you finally end up getting a hosting service plus a trouble free hosting, it will be like winning a jackpot.

The author of this article Menno Spijkstra is an Internet Marketing specialist who has been successful with several affiliate programs for many years. Menno finally decided to share his knowledge and experience through his website http://www.AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free newsletter and join his coaching program.

Simple Guide to a Better Web Hosting

2008-11-28T12:05:00.002-08:00

By Justin Job

With the intense competition among web hosting provider companies, it has created a confusing mind for new consumers when they want to start with a company. Most packages or deals out there are similar and this can be deceiving for the new user. This competition has led to the fall in prices for web hosting. However, how do we identify the good companies that will perform a good job for us?

First and foremost, we should find a company that provides 24 hours a day seven days a week of support. This means that your website can be attend to if anything happens. Say that your website malfunctioned in the weekend and you have to wait one or two days to inform the company of your problem. With 24/7 support, you can notify them instantly. To be sure, look for more reputable companies which have been around for some time rather than new companies that you have never heard of. Furthermore, you should get support from email, telephone and even live chat from the company if possible so that you can inform them about your problem in the fastest way possible.

The next feature that you should look at is the bandwidth. Sufficient bandwidth will ensure good connection. With enough bandwidth, download from your website happen in a fast speed. Therefore, you can check the bandwidth on any website just by judging the loading speed when you open it in a browser. To get a good idea, do it on different times because there will be times where the users are at a peak and there are times when there are fewer users. So you can have an idea how good the host is by testing how they perform in both scenarios.

Another feature that a good provider must have is the uptime guarantee of 99.99%. If you go for a 99.9% uptime company, you will realize that you have 7.6 hours a month where you website will not be working. It you multiple that with 12, you can know how much business you are losing with 99% uptime. Therefore, 99.99% is a must for a web provider company to be considered good. However it will be difficult to justify the uptime when come to practice. However no worry as you can always utilize the job done by web hosting review website that monitor the performance of web hosting.

Besides the main things that we mentioned, there are still some other features that you should look out for in a company. There are things like disk space, data transfer and email preferences. However, the main criteria for a web host to work well for you would still depend on the main features that we mentioned the support, bandwidth and uptime. If you have these 3 features in hand, it is unlikely that you will have too many problems with your website.

Justin is a webmaster and writer. His Hostgator web hosting review website review the hosting leader. For a quality hosting, Justin recommend Hostgator for both the quality and experiences.

Types of Web Hosting - Assessing Your Website's Needs

2008-11-28T12:05:00.001-08:00

By Ed Grier

Before selecting a web host it is paramount that you understand the various types of hosting options you have. Every website has different needs and meeting your site's needs will help produce a satisfying end result. Hosting services available to you will likely fall into one of the following categories:

Free Web Hosting

Free web hosting is definitely the cheapest option available, however as we all know there's no such thing as a free lunch and this holds true with so called "free" hosting services as well. Free web hosts will often be advertisement supported and have very limited features, storage space, and bandwidth. Generally this is not a good option for any website which supports a business or needs to offer users a stable and efficient environment. Free hosting services are best for small web sites which are not intended to do much more than share a bit of info with a small group of friends.

Shared Web Hosting

With shared web hosting a single computer referred to as a box or a server will generally hold a large number of websites. The number will depend on the company, the cost, and the hardware that makes up the machine. Shared hosting is often a reliable hosting option for most websites including both small business and personal use. The overall quality, speed, and cost will fluctuate significantly from host to host so it is important to do your homework before selecting a shared hosting center. Often websites which abuse or use more resources including CPU time or bandwidth will be shut down. If your website requires heavy resource allotment you will likely need to look into another hosting option.

Reseller Web Hosting

This is a less common form of hosting but it allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Common examples of this would be web design firms who host their clients' websites. In truth, the only difference between reseller web hosting and shared hosting is generally the size of the hosting company. The larger hosting companies such as Bluehost and HostMonster are just much larger versions of reseller web hosting.

Virtual Dedicated Server

Virtual dedicated servers are very similar to shared hosting except in how the allotment of resources is handled. Whereas with shared hosting all clients share the same CPU and bandwidth resources with virtual dedicated servers each client is guaranteed a set amount of CPU power and bandwidth. Virtual dedicated servers also offer their clients what is often referred to as "root" access to their virtual machine. This offers them more hands on control with how the machine runs including the ability to tinker with the operating system.

Dedicated Hosting Service

With dedicated hosting services the user has full control over the server and is the only client who uses the server. There are normally two types of dedicated hosting options which are managed and unmanaged. With managed hosting the client will have various support-personal or plans in place to assist them with managing the server and ensuring that things such as its security policies are up to date. Unmanaged will leave all the responsibility in the hands of the client which can be less expensive in some cases. In both cases having a dedicated server offers you much more control over what options are available on your server from mail programs to FTP services and so on. Naturally dedicated servers are much more expensive and therefore many webmasters opt for the cheaper shared or virtual private server options. With both types of dedicated hosting the servers are owned by the hosting company.

Colocation Web Hosting Service

Colocation is similar to dedicating hosting services, but in this case the user fully owns the server and the hosting center simply provides a physical space, power, and a connection to the internet for the client. In many cases there is little or no further support for the client beyond ensuring that there is power and the negotiated bandwidth available to the server. With this option in most cases the owner of the server will have an administrator who must visit to the facility or have another form of remote access to the machine.

Clustered Hosting

In some cases it is not enough to have one server handling the needs of a website. For these cases clustered hosting becomes a viable solution. With clustered hosting multiple servers host the same information allowing a much larger base of users to access the information at one time.

Grid Hosting

Grid hosting is a form of distributed hosting where a server cluster acts like a grid and is composed of multiple nodes.

Home Server

In some cases webmasters elect to manage their own web servers at home or at their place of business. This can be done on both a consumer-grade broadband connection or in some cases on something more capable. Home servers are much like colocation except for the loss of the expensive facilities which generally have backup power sources, industrial grade cooling systems, and various other benefits. Some ISPs do not allow their users to host their own websites so it is best to investigate this before attempting to setup your own web server.

Which Hosting Option Should I Choose?

If you're reading this article you probably should be choosing shared hosting, or either virtual or fully dedicated hosting. For most small to medium sized websites these are perfectly adequate and viable options. If your web hosting needs are larger than this you will likely have an IT specialist who is part of your team who would be better equipped to assess your web hosting needs.

Hopefully by now you have a better idea about what type of hosting you need. Now it's time for the real fun, choosing the best webhost!

Ed Grier is a writer for Best of the Web Hosts
http://www.bestofthewebhosts.com - news, reviews, and more for webmasters and bloggers.

Web Hosting Cost

2008-11-28T12:04:00.002-08:00

By Bill Sheers

Let's keep this simple: the name of the article is Web Hosting Cost so we will get to that quickly. First, briefly, here are the most common types of hosting and what they mean. Then, I will list some companies and what they cost. Note: we do not recommend or endorse any of these companies. This is purely factual information gathered and put in this article for you.

Dedicated hosting is a good option for someone who wants more storage and bandwidth, and also wants certain characteristics that are not available with shared web hosting

Shared web hosting is the most widely used web hosting service. It permits more than one site to be hosted on the same server.

Ecommerce Web hosting including secure shopping cart with paypal or some other payment support.

Here are some popular web hosting and their price. WE DO NOT RECOMMEND ANY OF THEM. This is for your information.

Hostgator $7.95 per month

BlueHost $6.95 per month

Lunarpages $4.95 per month

DreamHost $5.95 per month

GoDaddy $4.95 per month

IPower $3.95 per month

WebHostingBuzz $3.95 per month

Now, these prices all mean something different. Some of those prices are if you sign up for 6 months you, it averages to this price. If you sign up for 12 months, it with usually be even less 'per month' so don't think you are going to be able to join one and say "I'll take one month please." If you do, you are not going to get the lowest price. The good thing is you are not going to need it for only a month. Most likely you will have it for a long time, so you should be able to get the best price no matter which company you go with.

Just do your research and you will be fine.

Web hosting cost is not that tricky to figure out! I'm not kidding. And you can find a bunch of places to buy web hosting at this cool website called Affordablewebhostingservices.net. They have done all the research for you!

Dedicated Hosting For Beginners

2008-11-28T12:04:00.001-08:00

By Amy Nutt

Dedicated hosting is different from shared hosting in that it resides on a server by itself. Shared hosting means that several websites are sharing the same server, but when there is a problem with that single server, all of the websites residing on that server will fall victim to that problem. That is why more and more people are turning to dedicated hosting.

A business can purchase their own dedicated server or they can lease it. There are other options available for those who choose a dedicated server and that is to have their hosting managed. That is why dedicated hosting is frequently referred to as managed hosting. Nevertheless, dedicated hosting is more flexible than shared hosting.

Return on investment

In many ways, dedicated hosting can result in a larger return on investment. This is due to the fact that there is very little overhead involved. If a company were to have their dedicated hosting in-house, they may be facing some pretty steep costs. However, employing the hosting company to take care of all of the administrative responsibilities can prove to be quite profitable.

For those who may not have the IT staff or be able to afford a staff to take care of the server, having the hosting company take care of technical issues and routine maintenance is going to be something you might find quite handy. Basically, that allows you to concentrate on those things that are important within your business. Not that your hosting isn't important, because it is. It's just that your hosting won't do you any good if you don't do the marketing activities that are needed to draw people to your business. It also won't do you any good if you get a reputation for not being able to handle consumer needs because you're too busy concentrating on your hosting.

A must for your business

So if you're not too sure about what to do as far as your Internet presence goes, dedicated hosting is a good place to start. You can get all of the assistance that you need to ensure that everything goes smoothly. This means that you don't have to have technical expertise and you don't have to have knowledge of a lot of the technical turns. Your hosting company will explain things to you in ways that you can understand so that you know what it is you're getting. They will also not do anything drastic unless they let you know what it is they are doing, so you don't have to worry about some sort of unauthorized action being carried out.

If you're not on the Internet yet because you are not sure what it is you need to do, this is a great place to start. Once you figure out your hosting options, you can then work on getting a website built for your business. Many businesses find that they profit more on the Internet because they can reach a global audience. Reaching a global audience means global sales, if it is possible for your business. You'll notice a considerable difference in the amount of revenue that you bring in. What's great is that dedicated hosting does that for you.

So don't worry if you're a beginner or you know nothing about the world of Internet because you'll definitely catch on. You'll be able to learn as you go as someone else does the work. All you have to do is find a reliable company. Look at Internet reviews, talk to other businesses, and check out what businesses similar to you are using. Compare price plans and options. By doing this, you'll find the best dedicated hosting plan for you.

Premiere provider of managed IT services with data centre locations across Canada, provides managed hosting and managed services solutions for enterprises that require the highest levels of security and availability. Our company is PCI Compliant certified. Visit us at: data centre Toronto

Cheap Web Hosting For Your Business

2008-11-16T13:12:00.004-08:00

By Tem Balanco

Today have a presence on the web is as important for companies as it use to be having your name and address in the yellow pages. But dealing with the details that are involved with web site building and publication can be very discouraging for most risk takers and small business owners. These guidelines are in regards to cheap web hosting and are basically for helping beginner business people who are looking for a presence on the web but do not have any capital to burn.

If you are thinking about modernizing your business with a web site you should learn how a web host can fit your needs with a cheap web hosting plan. The primary task of a web host is to provide the storage and access to all of the files that make up a web site on electronic devices called servers.

The web host's servers benefit from a high-speed, high-bandwidth interface to the Internet, making it possible for web sites to be served world-wide with no degradation in speed. In addition, some web hosts furnish the client's connection to the Web, although this function is frequently bought from a third party (i.e., an ISP).

If you are in business you might think that you can save money by hosting your web site from your home or business computer. This may be technically possible, but it is rarely practical. Even a broadband connection will not be enough to handle the traffic to a business website. Such a website needs to handle many transactions at the same time and if it can't it spells doom for customer satisfaction. The cost to physically upgrade the connection is prohibitive for all but the largest companies.

The overhead of pricey equipment and high-bandwidth connections incurred by specialized web hosting services are covered by offering their services to an adequate amount of clients. Web hosting plans are the way in which the services are offered. The quantity of bandwidth and server space necessary for the client determines the cost of the web hosting plan.

The small business client must estimate bandwidth in order to select the best cheap web hosting plan that provides sufficient service, without wasting money on unused bandwidth or server space. Most web hosts offer tools and advice for estimating bandwidth and server space requirements.

Just as a yellow pages listing used to be vital for business, these days no company can be without a web presence. But since business owners are good at their business rather than web design, they're likely to need some tips on finding cheap web hosting. The web host's servers enjoy a high-speed, high-bandwidth connection to the Internet, allowing websites to be served anywhere in the world without delay. Budget wise and technically skilled entrepreneurs may consider hosting their website from home to reduce costs. The standard home or small business broadband connection does not have enough bandwidth to reach a significant number of customers simultaneously.

Learn A to Z About Adult Web Hosting

2008-11-16T13:12:00.003-08:00

By Justin Knights

In the internet today, vast flow of information is happening every single moment. Therefore, the content that is shared throughout the internet is huge. Adult content is now a normal sort of content which you can find in the internet. Also known as pornography, the internet has filled with it since internet started. Displaying adult content is legal if it obeys the so-called cyber law.

For an adult website to have its existence in the internet, the website must first be hosted by a web hosting provider that accepts adult content material. To host a website with adult content, features like storage, bandwidth, price and uptime should all be considered. An adult content website is basically the same as any other website out there. The only thing different is the extra control injected needed for the content of the website. This is important because of the different users out there who might access the website with adult content.

For a website with adult content, it will need a massive amount of server bandwidth because a website with this kind of nature will usually involve image hosting and downloading activities. With downloading function provided to the users, the website must have a huge amount of disk space to store all the files such as images and videos.

With that kind of nature, it seems that a dedicated server is more likely to be suitable for an adult content website. With dedicated server hosting, you can have more control and access over your data. For websites that would like to keep clients details, a co-location server is a must. This is because it can connect the computer you use with the hardware and connect it to the internet. A secure environment, technical support and rack space is also provided by the hosting plan. The only thing that needs to be accomplished is the software, hardware as well as maintenance for all the equipment used for the hosting of the website.

No matter what, for an adult website to be successful, the webmaster must get a good web hosting so that they will good great support and reliability. The most important thing is to know what the users would like and if we think like the user, we will know what to have in a website, therefore the success will follow.

Looking for the best hosting review? Check out WebHostingSecretRevealed.com - a place where the webmaster (Jerry) examine various hosting services by hosting websites on the web hosts first hand. Personally, I recommend his review on Hostmonster - read on, it's among the very few reviews that share honest opinions on Hostmonster.

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.

Web Hosting Scaling Based on Your Hosting Needs

2008-11-16T13:12:00.001-08:00

By Daren Albom

With the ever growing popularity of internet, more and more people find themselves require web hosting service to cater for their online needs. For hosting personal blog or internet business, web hosting is the key element to the success.

Hosting providers usually charge on a monthly basis. With their big scale of facilities and support a handsome charge will be incurred on you. However, paying that pricey charge is not often that necessary. You can always customize or choose the services to reduce your hosting cost.

Often time besides bombastic hardware in the server room, hosting companies have a luxury office space which might cost more than the server. This is though a comfort to have the visit to the office as well as the company reputation but do not forget that internet business is run totally online. Therefore those costs are not necessary. This branding effect has been partially the reason for the pricy charges. However it does not mean that big hosting company equals to over priced charges. If a big company does manage their resources in balance and efficiently it always leads to cost effectiveness.

What should be aware is our web hosting needs. Once we know that we can choose web hosting based on our needs but not just following the market trend. If you are a computer expert, you probably have known what you need and how to do it. Therefore a hosting with allowed customization will give you more freedom in carrying out your website. Or even hardcore expert could just host their websites from home. You can have your own server at home and host your stuff without any third party hassle like advertisement. But the latter case needs a great expertise and fund.

If you are not familiar with internet and computer perhaps you need more assistance from your hosting. Therefore a hosting with great customer support will help. And good customer service reflects the sincerity of the company in carrying out their business. Even better is that some web hosting company actually spoon feed webmaster by providing web design and building services like the QuickSite plan on Lunarpages. Some hosting companies have drag and build website developer tool and you need least technical knowledge with that.

There are also free web hosting services for those who are not familiar with the hosting thingy. You will have free hosting space to write your website contents. You can build your own polling survey and etc. But since it is free the catch is that banners and advertisement will be displayed in your website. But if you know that the website serves as a leisure platform with your course mates and friends advertisements will not bother.

Therefore your needs, knowledge and use directly affect your choice on web hosting scaling. If you are expert and you are going to build an internet business, you should go for a more bombastic hosting plan which will cost you something. But if you are just having fun with leisure blogging and discussion board, there are many free services like yahoo group, wordpress and etc to host your contents and activities.

Daren is a writer and webmaster. His Hostgator web hosting 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 here.

Business Web Hosting - Best Practices in Selecting a Virtual Private Server Provider

2008-11-16T13:11:00.000-08:00

By Bradley E

Most businesses and websites begin with a shared hosting provider, which can be more convenient but also poses certain limitations on bandwidth, file transfer and server configurations. As a result, you'll likely want to upgrade from a shared web host to a virtual private server, which can provide an effective way to give you the power you need without the full cost or maintenance of a dedicated server.

VPS Advantages

When you upgrade to a VPS, you'll get your own "virtual" server space. For most users, you'll want to select a Linux Apache server that runs Web Host Manager (WHM) which can facilitate the process of managing your new server.

Those familiar with cPanel will find WHM to be an extension of the platform, allowing you to manage multiple sites, domains and configurations with relative ease - rather than managing domains as extensions of your primary domain, each of your domains will get their own account and you can assign them specific IP addresses. Rather than sharing an IP, you will get 2 IPs assigned to your server and can even set your own name servers, which can have SEO advantages by ensuring that your IP "neighborhood" is clean.

As a transition from shared hosting, a virtual private server provides a number of advantages to allow you to scale as you grow your site or network of sites.

Selecting a VPS Provider

Your choice of virtual private server provide is even more important than the shared web host you select, especially for first time server operators - a hosting provider with a strong track record of reliable support will help you to get the most from your new VPS. As a result, make sure you pick a reputable host that offers around-the-clock phone and email support for technical problems. The best hosts will work with you to resolve problems, and, more importantly, help find solutions to ensure that the issues don't recur in the future. For web masters upgrading from shared hosting, you'll likely encounter configuration, backup and technical issues that you've never seen before - in these cases, having the right hosting support can provide a world of difference.

Find deals on top-rated Liquidweb Reviews and read Liquidweb VPS details at iReviewer technology reviews.

The CPanel is the Most Popular Web Hosting Control Panel

2008-11-14T11:48:00.003-08:00

By Steve D Evans

CPanel is where you monitor and manage your website, or in other words it is a web based client interface. CPanel is the most popular interface used by web hosts, and at least until recently has been more popular with bloggers and home users than the more expensive Microsoft offering. The other contender, which is used in Europe more than elsewhere in the world, is the Plesk interface. CPanel has become so common because it makes simple so many aspects of running and maintaining web space on a server that would once have required IT staff with professional training to perform.

As a result the CPanel control panel software is provided by the hosting providers on a lot of dedicated servers, and is used for almost all US web hosting packages that I have seen.

CPanel also has an easy to use email utility which helps to create email account for the users with user friendly interface. This easy to use interface is packed full of useful features.

CPanel lets you control your host account environment. The main advantage of this operating system is that it is so simple to use that your below average computer user cannot easily mess there sites up! It allows users to monitor things like disk space and bandwidth usage. CPanel also allows you to store your data in MySQL databases. Within the CPanel you will usually also have access to PhpMyAdmin, which offers you a feature to store database backups on a file and download a dump of the database.

Many hosting providers advertise that you can host unlimited sites, create your own packages and control it all within a slightly more expensive reseller package. This is achieved by using a software add-on to Cpanel called WHM. Which for the master account url for the reseller account means that WHM can be opened and from within WHM all the sub-accounts can be viewed and maintained. If you plan to create a few web sites then we recommend that you go for a reseller package even if you have no intention of reselling web space and supporting other users.

If you are thinking of starting your own web site hosting service we recommend that you offer your customers quality products like cPanel and Fantastico. Fantastico is a system which comes with Cpanel systems, and which provides a simply method to quickly and without training set-up a range of very useful scripts, on your web space. These scripts vary widely in their applications from shopping site payment cart systems, to complete web site content management, and all come free in addition to the CPanel itself.

The larger hosting providers offer four different dedicated home and business server hosting options to provide something for every individual and all sizes of business. People choose their web services providers because for great web hosting features with CPanel, stable and secure servers, outstanding technical support, and low prices.

Having sung the praises of Cpanel, Plesk is also a very capable system, although if you are familiar already with the Cpanel it will need a little while to learn. The current Plesk version (8.1) is reportedly the most stable and secure Plesk software for Linux and UNIX ever released. Plesk has different versions for Windows and the Linux operating systems. So, with Plesk you can even use the same control panel for different operating systems.

We like the CPanel Email Account Creator which is the perfect script to setup a Hotmail / Yahoo like web email system to allow your users to signup and start sending emails to friends and family with your hosting. All you need is a CPanel hosting account and as we have already said there are so many good hosting companies which offer it.

The CPanel system helps you to set up databases and forces your databases to include a special prefix so that it may distinguish your database from ones owned by other users on the server which have the same name.

Having said that CPanel is easily learnt, you will find though that individual hosting companies do customize it extensively. The CPanel features provided by the free web space hosting providers that use it, for example, will vary, but usually they still include at least a file manager for uploading and editing your free web pages online.

Some include all the features of paid hosting companies, such as MySQL databases, Fantastico script installer, cron jobs manager, add-on domains, Email management tools, AWSTATS and the Webalizer and other website statistics programs, and so on. If they do provide even half of tehse for free, you have found a great offering This will allow you to try before you buy, and only buy once you know your web site is a success, and worth the investment.

SpamAssassin is available on many CPanel hosting sites. If so, you will find that SpamAssassin can be easily enabled and configured for your account directly through the CPanel hosting control panel. SpamAssassin is a mail filtering system which scans each and every email received under the email accounts hosted from your CPanel account for characteristics which are typical of spam messages. Each characteristic found inside of an email message is given a specific score, and if a threshold is exceed the email will be automatically labeled as spam and sent to a special spam inbox ready for deletion.

The first impression of cPanel's control panel can be expressed as basic, but don't be fooled by apparent simplicity. You will see nothing fancy or flashy, just a simple interface with several icons representing the control panel's functions.

CPanel seems to be, in the view of most web site creators, the best software which provides you with so many easy services to maintain your website as an owner. In other words, CPanel has won the popular vote and is seen as second to none when it comes to managing your website and databases.

Steve Evans as a webmaster himself, recommends that you may also find interesting the further discussions about web site solutions, and the next new thing which is business blogging, here.

Steve also writes for the Dog Breeds web site.

Today's Basics of Web Hosting

2008-11-14T11:48:00.001-08:00

By Phil Boo

This first paragraph will explain briefly what 'website hosting' actually is... For a Website to be seen across the world it needs to be 'hosted' by a 'provider'. These providers basically have several 'web servers'; which are basically really big and complex computer hubs - from here they connect everything on the web servers to the internet so that the information can be seen around the world.

There are many types of 'hosting providers' from personal to multi national business models, but for personal and small business there are two main options ...

A Free web hosting service, this is free, advertisement-supported (sometimes) web hosting, and is often limited when compared to paid hosting.

The other is Shared Hosting ... Which is both the most popular and the most confusing... is a type of hosting where many web sites are hosted on same physical server. It is the cheapest and easiest way to get a web site up and running. Shared web hosting is perfect for web blogs, personal web pages, small forums, small business and e-commerce sites. Shared web hosting is ideal for establishing both simple websites up to medium sized complex websites.

Shared hosting can be explained using an example of a leased space in a office building. A specific part the building is yours, where you can place your own name or company name on the door. Building manager will provide you security, maintenance, and facilities management.

Shared hosting is also alike. You leased or purchased a hosting plan from a shared hosting provider. He gives you disk space, bandwidth, and all the other essentials from a specific server at a certain cost. The features of that server are also shared with others.

The shared web hosting provider is responsible for the security, maintenance of the server, network uptime and all the other important things. More than one websites are hosted on one server having different and unique domain names. This is called "shared" hosting because your home page has its own domain name. Shared hosting can also be called 'virtual hosting'.

So let's just recap ... Shared hosting is when a web host divides up a server so that it can host multiple websites in virtual directories. This is the most common type of hosting available on the internet today. For most sites, a quality shared hosting setup will get the job done.

Most shared hosting plans will suffice for 80% of business and 99% of personal use, but beware of Hosting Providers as they will describe complex offers which may open a can of worms surrounding restrictions and limits. Most web hosts have limits to encourage you to upgrade to their more expensive plans. Don't forget that should you need more of 'whatever they are offering' you can upgrade at a later stage; it is a tad more difficult to downgrade.

I hope this has explained the basics. Should you need either hosting, or hosting for multiple websites, you can achieve this for $7.95 per month.

For more information please visit my website: http://www.GlobalTop5.com/Web-Hosting.html

Mr. P. Booker
Senior Internet Advisor and Journalist
This week's topic relates to this website:
http://www.globaltop5.com/web-hosting.html

How to Pick the Right Web Host

2008-11-14T11:47:00.003-08:00

By James LaBarr

There are an estimated 200 million web sites on the internet, not including single blogs, blogposts, or unrecognized sites. Of those 200 million, you have thousands of web hosting sites to choose from. So you ask, "How do I choose the right one?" Well that's what I'm going to go over. Your main goal is to choose the right host to suit your particular needs. I will not recommend any single host, but give you a top 5 to choose from depending on your needs.

DETERMINE THE BEST HOST

Choosing the right host is simple, but one of the most important parts to choosing a web host is first deciding what kind of website you have, and then doing some research on how different web hosts will provide the needs. When you visit a web hosting web site, they are going to throw a lot of numbers at you; this is important, but alone should not influence your decision.

7 Things That You Should Check Into Before Choosing Your Host

1. Uptime - What is the average uptime for the host, usually 99.5

2. Disk space - How much on-site space do you need

3. Bandwidth - Are you going to host videos, files, or transfer a lot of items?

4. Features - Are there any particular features your site requires

5. Service - Does the host have the services you need?

6. Support - Help is going to be needed someday, will they be there?

7. Performance - Will the host handle your predicted user base?

Now figure a few things out. What type of website do you have or want? Do you have an e-commerce site, an informational site, or just a personal page? This is very important when determining the type of web hosting would be best for you.

There are free plans out that are nice, but you can expect to have ads on your site from the web host. If this doesn't bother you, then the free plans will work for you. If you don't want any ads from third party websites, then you will need to pay for your service. These plans range in price, but are very affordable. Prices generally vary depending on the features, bandwidth, and disk space offered by the web host.

For those people looking to put an e-commerce site, or other larger sites onto the Internet, you would want a dedicated hosting plan. This type of plan is much more expensive than a shared hosting plan, but you get a lot more bang for the buck, so to say. A dedicated hosting plan means that you will be the only one using a certain server, this means better performance for your website, compared to shared hosting, sharing the server with multiple users.

When choosing this type of hosting plan, make sure it includes support for various types of scripts which will enhance the look and feel of your website. A dedicated hosting plan just allows you to have more control than a shared hosting plan, because you are actually leasing the entire server from the hosting company.

The Top Five Web Hosting Sites To Choose From In 2008

1. Inmotion

*Fast email with SPAM blocking

*90 day money back guarantee (best we know of)

*Very reliable with 99.9% Uptime

*Easy to use control panel and a premium web site builder

*Unlimited disk space and unlimited monthly traffic ($8.95 plan)

*Very helpful, probably best known for top technical support

2. Bluehost

*Web Space: Unlimited

*Monthly Bandwidth: Unlimited

*Multiple Domains: Unlimited

*POP3 Email: 2500

*Subdomains: 20

*FTP Accounts: 1000

*MySQL Databases: 50 :

*Free Domain: Yes, Forever!

*Yahoo Marketing Credit: $50

*Google AdWords Credit: $25

*Ecommerce Ready: Yes

*Website Builder: Yes

*Money Back: 30 days

*Support: 24/7 toll free

3. HostPad

*1,700 Gigabytes of Disk Space

*17,000 Gigabytes of Bandwidth

*UNLIMITED Domains in 1 account

*Unlimited Email Accounts

*Unlimited Databases

*SSI, FTP, Web Stats, CGI, Ruby (RoR), Perl, PHP, MYSQL

*Anti Virus and SPAM Protection

*Free Domain Name for life

* Ecommerce Enabled

*24x7 Email and Phone Support

*$25 Adwords™ Ad credit

*$30 Yahoo™ Ad credit

*30 Day Money Back Guarantee

4. HostMonster

*Web Space: 1500 Gb

*Monthly Bandwidth: 15 Tb

*Multiple Domains: Unlimited

*POP3 Email: Unlimited

*Subdomains: Unlimited

*FTP Accounts: Unlimited

*MySQL Databases: 100

*Free Domain: Yes, Forever!

*Ecommerce Ready: Yes

*Website Builder: Yes

*Money Back: 30 days

*Support: 24/7 toll free

5. JustHost

*FREE Domain For Life & FREE Instant Setup

*No Hidden Fees

*Unlimited GB's of Web Space

*Unlimited GB's of Transfer

*Unlimited Domain Hosting

*Unlimited E-Mail Accounts

*Unlimited MySQL Databases

*SSL, FTP, Stats CGI, Ruby (RoR), Perl, PHP, MySQL

An informed buyer is a smart buyer. All you have to do is put it to action. That's all there is to it. Welcome to the world of web hosting and good luck.

James LaBarr

http://www.pc-geek-it.com

jlabarr@pc-geek-it.com

How Much Bandwidth Do You Really Need?

2008-11-14T11:47:00.001-08:00

By Christine Anderssen

Bandwidth is the measure of data volume that is transmitted over an internet connection. Bandwidth is measured on a lot of things, and there are different ways to assess how much bandwidth you use. In order to choose the correct hosting plan, you need to know your bandwidth requirements. Web hosting companies will offer different prices tailored to your bandwidth needs. Once you have an idea of what kind of bandwidth package you need, you can search around and make comparisons in prices.

It is good to err on the side of caution when happening upon service providers that offer "Unlimited Bandwidth." This is impossible, and any company offering this just wants to trap you. There are no broadband companies that offer unlimited bandwidth connection to their clients, so how is it possible that the web hosting companies that use them would be able to provide unlimited bandwidth?

When you come across a hosting company that offers "Unlimited Bandwidth" as one of its services, be sure to take a good look at its "Terms of Service" menu item or the "Acceptable Use Policy" section. Read the fine print about this so-called "unlimited" disclaimer. Some sites will just use that term to pique your interest, whilst others discuss your site "qualifying" for unlimited bandwidth. For example: your bandwidth may be "free" but if you go over 5 GB per month they will charge you. Some may even offer unlimited bandwidth but with a torrent of terms and conditions such as no image galleries, HTML or graphics! You may also not even be allowed to link other sites back to your own. Your website will basically be non-functional, and all because you have fallen into the "Unlimited Bandwidth" trap!

It is good to do proper research and to find a web hosting service provider that has a range of different services and specified bandwidth packages. It is also wise to find the web hosting companies that will allow an upgrade should the bandwidth you had chosen prove not to be enough after a while.

Before you decide on your bandwidth requirements, take the following factors into consideration:

Roughly how many users will be accessing your website?

How many pages does your website consist of? You have to realize that it is not the quantity but the quality of the text. You may have a few pages, but they could be filled with bandwidth chewing graphics. The HTML in your content will also use up a lot of data volume. You should even take links to other websites off your site into consideration too.

Large audio and video files will require a lot more space. You also need to think about whether you will be adding more in the future. Computer programs and file downloads will also require more bandwidth.

Virtual Reality and full-length three-dimensional audio and video presentations will require the most bandwidth of all.

It is good to watch your usage carefully over the first few months to check whether you have chosen the right bandwidth requirements for your website. Naturally, it will take you some time to determine whether the bandwidth you have chosen is right for your site, because you will need to see the amount of traffic you are receiving.

Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4you and offers all your web hosting

and web design

requirements for small business owners in South Africa.

Beginner Web Host Options With 1and1 Internet

2008-11-14T11:46:00.000-08:00

By Bradley E

As a small business owner, you most likely use a variety of advertising methods from print to television, radio and flyers. If you don't have a web site or domain name URL, you are missing out on a wide set of potential customers. While placing your phone number or address on your promotional materials may help drive some traffic to your stores, making information about your business publicly accessible on line will pay wide dividends in terms of helping you to target new customers in your area.

Beginner Web Hosting

The first step you need to take is to obtain a domain name for your business. When selecting a domain name, you should look for a .com domain that is memorable and reflects your business. There are two general approaches: you can find a domain name that represents your existing business name (e.g., MyStoreName.com or the local variant MyCityMyStore.com) or find a generic name that reflects what you offer (e.g. MyServices or MyCityMyServices.com). In fact, it may be advantageous to select both options to give you maximize flexibility in your promotions.

Once you have a domain name, then you'll want to build out your first web site. Rather than hiring an expensive web developer, you can use tools such as the 1and1 Click and Build program to use an intuitive visual interface. Getting your business presence on line should be affordable, effective and easy - hosting with 1&1 can help you meet these criterion in a single location.

Save on 1and1 hosting and read the latest 1and1 review at iRW.com

Hosting Shopping Guides - How to Choose a Right Web Host

2008-11-10T13:02:00.002-08:00

By Justin Knights

Shopping for a certain thing that you like could take a lot of your time. This rule is the same when someone is looking for the perfect web hosting to host his website. How can he choose from the countless choices available out in the market? Searching without a clue will be like finding a needle in a sack of sand. But if you know what you are looking for, it will cut down the searching time for your web hosting search.

To begin, you must first know the size of the website that you want just like you must know the size of the pants you are wearing. You can estimate the size of your website by knowing how much information you want to store in your website and also the type of website that you want to build. This storage space will sometimes include your email storage. So, a generous estimation is better than an exact estimation.

Next, you need to figure out how to get your content onto the website. A very important feature here for you to achieve that is the FTP access. This feature enables you to upload, edit and delete files on your website. This feature is also much better to use than a web based interface method.

With all the files uploaded onto your website, you will need enough bandwidth to ensure that your website will operate smoothly. If you have insufficient bandwidth, you will not be able to support the activity going on in your website. When that happens, your website will break down with an error.

The reason is that the bandwidth actually determines the amount of data that can be transferred in and out of your website. When the amount is exceeded, you bandwidth is used up. Therefore, estimation is also needed here to know how much bandwidth you should have for your website. The more bandwidth you go for, the more you need to pay. So, choose an amount that you can afford so that you won't end up paying extra for something that you won't be using. Another issue about bandwidth is to be aware of providers that promise unlimited bandwidth. These kinds of deals are often marketing schemes to attract you. These companies actually provide you with a certain amount of bandwidth. Once you have used up all your bandwidth, they will make you pay additional fees for whatever exceeded amount that you have used.

In conclusion, to know what you want in your website is very important for you to search the right web hosting provider for you. Always do a little research to know what you are dealing with and do not fall for cheap deals that often turn out to be a nightmare.

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.

Is Reseller Hosting a Business Opportunity?

2008-11-10T13:02:00.001-08:00

By Daren Albom

The World Wide Web has become a commodity in our life. People spent more than 12 hours per day on the internet; billions of dollars are transacted through the internet; internet sales are going up every year and etc. Therefore the idea of setting up web hosting companies to cater for this internet needs is more and more popular among entrepreneurs.

However a big cost will involve when you are setting up a web hosting company because that kind of business needs great computing resources and dedicated internet connections. Also other hosting facilities like power supply and air conditioning are all big cost for a business start up. For beginner entrepreneurs, they might not afford to have the initial cost or to cope with the risk. So if you are one of them reseller hosting is definitely your choice.

So what is reseller hosting? Basically reseller hosting account is a web hosting account that you can customize the hosting features and resell it to others. How reseller hosting works is you get a reseller hosting from other big web hosting company. The company has already set up properly a master control panel for you and you can easily control and customize the hosting features. For example you buy a reseller hosting with 50 Gbytes, then you divide it into 10 smaller hosting account with 5 Gbytes each account, you look for 10 customers and sell the service to them. You charge the 10 customers for the service and typically the total charges will be more than what you need to pay to the bigger hosting company. So the difference will be your profit.

Isn't it sounds easy? You get a reseller account and look for customers. You give them a customized web hosting and they pay you. You direct all the problems back to your reseller hosting company and you enjoy the money every month.

In fact it is true and false. It is true because the initial reseller hosting provider will prepare everything for you. They will get your reseller hosting account ready with program like web host manager in Hostgator. This kind of tool will allow you to create your customer accounts easily. After account is set up, your customer can instantly access to the hosting space and start administering their websites. Your customers will have their own control panel in their hosting and scripts. So basically it is almost an automated process.

However I said it is false because it will somehow involve minimal technical issues. If you are not really equipped with IT and web hosting knowledge, you either should get a book and start learning or opt out for the business. Although the business proposal sounds easy with the redirection of issues back to the initial providers, your customers eventually are still dealing with you. If you fail to give a solid support to your customers and the support of initial hosting does not come in time, customer will lose confidence on you. And also with the stiff competition in the industry it is a challenge to market your hosting services.

So now you roughly know the pro and con of reseller hosting business. It sounds more bitter than sweet. However the good news is stiff competition always means good money behind. If you survive the war lucrative income is not difficult at all. So if you are doing some serious planning on reseller hosting business, a suggestion is that you should always choose a quality web hosting as your provider. Because if the hosting has good quality you will save a lot of headache in dealing with downtime and other critical technical issues; if their support are great then you can rely on them to solve your customers' issues; if their hosting features and scripting are sufficient it gains plus point for your products. Basically if you get a quality reseller hosting, your web hosting company has a quality service too.

Hostgator is famous of their reseller hosting for they originally started off their business with reseller hosting. Therefore they definitely have experiences in handling that. To continue you can take a look at Hostgator hosting review.

Resell Web Hosting Basic Starter Knowledge

2008-11-07T13:27:00.000-08:00

By Tem Balanco

If you are interested in starting a "resell web hosting" business there are a few things that you should keep in mind. First hand, while this will bring in income you didn't have, it shouldn't be your primary source of income until your business is off the ground and running.

You need to be able to advertise to build up clientele in order for you to get your "resell web hosting" business in a good position to bring in sufficient income. Keep in mind that satisfied customers will bring you more business.

Setting up an automated system is one of the many different kinds of tools that your business can implement and utilize to become more convenient for you and much more efficient for you and your customers.

If nothing else on the "resell web hosting" page is automated, you must have an automated billing system. This helps you to keep track of email invoices, unpaid or suspended accounts, or customers' credit cards. This way, non-paying clients do not slip through cracks, which makes this an efficient way to protect the investment.

Forms, when completed, may be a statement, a request, an order, etc., e.g. a check may be a form. Also there are forms for taxes; filling one in is a duty to have determined how much tax one owes, and/or the form is a request for a refund. See also Tax return.

An administration system that works well will give you the needed tools to manage accounts that have been ordered by customers. This will also allow you to delete or add domains. Passwords is also something you will be able to change when needed. Depending on the system you pick your tools will also vary.

Reliably providing your clients novel services and exciting products is the way to successfully resell web hosting. The reseller must keep pace with the market. The clients must find the seller's services exciting and satisfying. By employing an automated system, the reseller can profitably provide host services to clients without investing much personal time in the business.

If you want to get into the resell web hosting business there are a number of things to remember. This should not be your primary source of income in the beginning, but rather a secondary source until your business is established. Different tools exist which you may use for business to make the job more convenient. If you get set up with the automated system, things will run more efficiently for customers and for you too. You must have order forms available; this lets you verify info for registration, validate the results, verify the credit card info, and enter billing info into forms for use in the future.

Reseller Web Hosting - Invest in Your Business

2008-11-07T13:26:00.006-08:00

By Tem Balanco

From one reseller web hosting you can offer your clients Linux Hosting, Windows Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, and even Fully Managed Servers.Host a few sites for yourself or your clients, offer web hosting as a value-added service, or build your own web hosting empire - it's up to you! No formal technical experience is required and we fully manage everything for you. We assume all the risk of operating the entire hosting back-end -- you just make money.

Unlike other reseller plans, our reseller web hosting will give you an almost unfair advantage over your competitors by allowing you to meet the needs of all your customers -- and our flat rate pricing can help you enjoy profit margins of 10 to 1.For one low monthly fee you can instantly be in the hosting business selling premium web hosting, email.

If you're a web page designer, you'll gain the opportunity to make bigger income than most by being in the "reseller web hosting" business. The greatest advantage of beginning such a business is that the investment is low, and so is the risk.

One of the biggest things you must consider before you buy sites from another company is whether there are any limits as to how many sites you can buy. It might benefit you to invest with a bigger company which offers unrestricted sites if you want to have a big business yourself.

The product and space that you provide your customers will determine what they are willing to invest in it themselves. Your clientele is what is going to keep your business booming, you want to offer them the best products, and services that you can, ensuring them that you will keep offering them the latest and greatest features is another way to bring in business.

The variation of your potential income from "reseller web hosting" depends on what you initially paid, how much you charge, and what can you offer your customers. The standard income you will see will vary from $100-$250 and above per customer. Just selling one web page per week can sustain your income.

The tools you select will fundamentally affect the amount of time which you have to apply to growing your business. If you utilize an automated system to manage all purchases, passwords, and billing, you will quickly make progress toward profitability without being mired in the technicalities.

There are several ways to go about reseller web hosting. You can simply become an affiliate for a larger company, or you can start your own reseller web service. Your potential income from reselling web hosting services depends on how much you initially paid, how much you charge, and what value-added services you can offer your customers. If you can utilize an automated system to manage all facets of your business, including purchases, passwords, and billing, then you can quickly make progress toward profitability without becoming mired in the technicalities of administering host services.

Reseller Hosting - A New Way to Make Money on the Web

2008-11-07T13:26:00.005-08:00

By Tem Balanco

Resellers of web hosting plans are simply entrepreneurs who are acting as middlemen. They offer the hosting services that they have leased from another web host's server rather than purchasing and maintaining their own equipment. Most of the time, the quality of services that are offered by resellers is so good that the consumer is not aware that they are dealing with resellers who do not own their own web servers.

Since they may pick and choose from a lot of dedicated hosting services, resellers are in the position to be able to give clients the best web server hosting plans. If you plan to host many websites, you should think about a reseller hosting since it will suit you very well. The reason it's so good is that you may control the whole thing at one location. Thus, you may manage the site well and get all the web hosting needs too. So, how may we consider a reseller hosting as a good catch?

To begin with, it requires 24/7 support, virtually no downtime at all, and immediate backup as well. Whatever else may be required will be dependent on your individual hosting needs. Nevertheless, you have to remember that the first items listed are absolutely required as features of any hosting package before it can be one you should consider signing up for.

occupant satisfaction with an office environment also plays a role in its cost-effectiveness. If office conditions are poor, employees can become uncomfortable and dissatisfied, which can cancel the expected savings. Fortunately, appropriate office technologies and design strategies can improve satisfaction with acoustics, lighting, indoor air quality, thermal comfort, and workstation design.To evaluate the effect of this office design on employees, the NRC-IRC formed a consortium of members interested in examining open-plan offices from a multidisciplinary approach.

There's probably less knowledge required in being a reseller hosting than you'd think, considering the complexity of Internet Services. As a reseller, though, what you're ultimately avoiding is the physical contact with the equipment, and much of the technical side of things. A reseller's involvement in technical matters can vary from program to program. And the more technically involved the reseller becomes, the more personalized and individual its service will be.

A reseller hosting account is a particular type of web server hosting plan that allows the reseller to buy the hosting services at a discount, or at wholesale, and then offer the hosting to a third party. The third party then becomes a client of the reseller and their hosting resources, such as their allotted hard drive space and bandwidth allowance. Entrepreneurs are actually middle men for resellers of web hosting plans. Rather then working on or owning their own equipment, they off hosting services in which they have leased from a different web host's server.

The Benefits of Professional Web Hosting

2008-11-07T13:26:00.003-08:00

By Russell Blanc

Here is where I will explain to you the benefits of professional web hosting. The web hosting marketplace is extremely competitive where web hosting providers fight for survival, but ultimately in the long run, only the real web hosting professionals survive. This is a fact. And here are eight benefits of professional web hosting:

Benefit #1: A professional web host is usually 100% dedicated *Only* to web hosting. That is their sole business interest and the professionals will be focused strictly on this service. This ensures that the service will be high quality when a company can solely focus on supplying web hosting.

Benefit #2: Professionals always keep up with the latest in the web hosting industry. The web hosting technology is rapidly changing almost everyday. And If your web hosting provider supports you with the latest technology, you have an edge over your competitors by incorporating the best features.

Benefit #3: Professionals will never oversell disk space or bandwidth. Most of the web hosting plans have gone unlimited, so its a moot point. Unlimited Web Hosting is the way of the future. Web Hosting professionals cannot be interested in the short term gains. They have to focus long-term. Web Hosting Professionals offer reliable and quality service and pride themselves on great customer service.

Benefit #4: When it comes to technical support no one can beat a true professional with a technology background. Most web hosting companies provide you with 24/7 support and usually include phone and email. In addition, most web hosts provide an online knowledgebase, forum, faqs, etc....

Benefit #5: Professional hosts have web hosting plans tailored to suit everyone's requirements. They understand the needs of their clients better than the average person. They keeping coming up with fresh new plans and features and also focus on an aggressive price point with many promotions during the calendar year. The more choice made available to you, the better. Some web hosts even go to the extent of providing customised plans for the individual.

Benefit #6: Usually a professional web host will have been in the hosting world for some time with many years of experience. And this could prove vital and useful if you need expert help in resolving technical issues. Experience always comes in hand during a crisis.

Benefit #7: Reasonable pricing. A price which balances properly with the features and facilities offered is a key benefit while dealing with professionals. In a competitive marketplace with several web hosting providers competing for your business, you will get great value for your money. If you end up paying a high cost for relatively low quality service, well then there are many services out there that will cater to your web hosting needs.

Benefit #8: Associating with a professional also gives you a professional image even if you are a newcomer to this business. Run your website as a business because you are judged by the company you keep and your professional image. It also inspires you to maintain similar attitude towards your customers.

So keep the above benefits in mind, and remember if you benefit, your business or website will run more efficiently.

Russell Blanc manages an online portal and resource about web hosting at http://www.iwebhostingplans.com

Shared Web Hosting - 6 Things to Consider

2008-11-07T13:26:00.001-08:00

By Russell Blanc

Are you ready to consider a shared web hosting plan. Here are the 6 points you need to consider. The big concern for you once your site is designed is to get your website hosted by a reliable web host. And there are many hosting providers out there, all competing for your business.

But with so many web hosting companies offering various types of web hosting packages - shared, dedicated, and managed hosting, it is very hard to know what hosting plan to choose. It can be downright overwhelming.

Which type of hosting should you choose?

If you are a small business owner or a webmaster or someone who wants to host a site, and cost is a major concern - go for shared hosting. It is probably the best break-entry situation into a web-hosting account. But before you make your hosting decision, let us first learn what shared hosting service is. Shared web hosting means that the same server hosts more than a single website. It is very common today that you will find hundreds of websites hosted on a single server. And depending on the quality of the server and its performance, your website should operate at maximum efficiency.

Shared web hosting service is an easy and cheaper way of hosting web sites if you do not require extremely high performance and high bandwidth. Even with so many websites hosted on a web server, you can be rest assured that the web hosting providers will not compromise on any kind of security and performance issues on the shared hosting servers. Before you go in for shared hosting, consider the following 6 items:

Shared Web Hosting: 6 Things to Consider When Choosing a Web Hosting Provider

1. Go through some sites already hosted on the server to see the response time. If the sites take very long to load then probably your server is overloaded. Test them at different points of time. However the difficulty might be in finding sites on that particular server.

2. Usually shared hosting is economical. Verify this. In most probability, you can expect to pay $5-$10 per month for shared web hosting services. Although I am seeing a breakthrough in the price point probably moving to under $5 a month in pretty short time. You might want to consider Bluehost or Lunarpages as solid web hosting providers. Today, due to stiff competition in the web hosting industry, many web hosts offer unlimited storage space and unlimited bandwidth.

3. Go in for a shared hosting web servers managed by professionals who are highly skilled with specialized knowledge of the field. You might want to see how long the company has been in business. In such a case you can concentrate on your web business and let the professionals worry about the maintenance and uptimes of the web server. It is always a smart move to sign up with a reputable web hosting provider.

4. Focus on the web hosting providers' reliability issues. Do your homework to find out the reliability of your host and check past performance as well as uptime assurance etc. You want the highest uptime reliability possible.

5. In shared web hosting you just need one bad website in your shared web server to get your website banned altogether by the search engines due to shared IP address. Anyway you can always pay a little extra to get a dedicated IP address and avoid this problem. Having a dedicated IP might well be worth the investment if you are serious about your web site, but if you are a beginner, I would not worry about this too much. I sort of believe the search engines will ban the bad websites domain name before banning the whole lots of sites. Shared Web Hosting is pretty common out there and a great place to start.

6. Consider all the features that come with the package. See if you are really getting what you are paying for. Before you decide to sign a deal on shared web hosting, be sure to consider all the points mentioned above. After all, selecting a right web hosting services may be one of the most critical business decisions you will be making for the success of your online business.

Russell Blanc manages an online web portal and resource about Web Hosting where users can compare and select web hosting providers.

An Introduction to UNIX Web Hosting

2008-11-07T13:25:00.004-08:00

By Russell Blanc

What Is UNIX? UNIX was first developed in AT&T's Bell Laboratories in the early 1970's. In the four decades of use, the UNIX operating system has earned the reputation as one of the most powerful, versatile and flexible secure operating systems around.

The UNIX operating system has been under constant development ever since its inception. It is extremely stable system for servers, desktops and laptops.

UNIX systems also have a graphical user interface similar to Microsoft Windows which provides an easy to use environment. In the early 1980's, UNIX systems began to grow rapidly and was noticed by industry analysts and researchers. Throughout the 1980's, the debate about the strengths and weaknesses of UNIX systems often raged. And, in an effort to further differentiate competing UNIX system products, analysts kept developing and adding features of their own.

Why Should I Choose UNIX?

You should choose the platform based on your website needs. Define specific functions you need your website to perform along with the programming language and database required to perform them.

What is Free BSD and OpenBSD?

There are two main Unix-based operating systems: FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The good thing about these systems is that they seem to be very stable once you install them on your machines. OpenBSD is also known to be one of the most secure operating system in the world. But with OpenBSD you will have to sacrifice some features for security. Again the best thing about these systems is that they are both free.

What Scripting Languages Are Available For UNIX?

UNIX supports a wide variety of application languages, more than any other operating system. The most common include C, C++, Shell, Perl, Tcl, Python, Java and PHP.

What Databases Does UNIX Support?

Databases available for UNIX are SQL and mySQL. Which one you choose depends on your needs and what your Web Hosting Provider offers. This is an important item for you to review when choosing your web hosting company.

Why is UNIX better for your hosting purposes?

Most obviously because it is cheaper than Windows. It is also more reliable and secure. About 70% of the internet web servers run UNIX/LINUX operating system.

What Is Linux?

Linux is an Open Source Unix-type operating system. A young student named Linus Torvalds at the University of Helsinki in Finland initially created it as a hobby. Today, it has become quite popular worldwide because of its functionality and availability. This is functionally very similar to UNIX, so most web servers will use Linux.

What Is Apache?

The Apache HTTP Server is an open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows NT. Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since 1996 because of its reputation as a secure, efficient and extensible server, in sync with the current HTTP standards.

Russell Blanc manages an online web hosting resource and portal comparing and reviewing web hosting providers.

Make Passive Online Income - Make Money Hosting Advertising Options

2008-11-07T13:25:00.003-08:00

By Richard Essex

Here is a very simply web site idea to make passive online income and support a basic requirement for any business's success - advertising. However, what you are going to be doing is working as an intermediary as opposed to actually selling the advertising yourself. This will save you time and allow you to focus on attracting customers to your site. In a way, you are acting as an affiliate.

You simply build a web site with various tabs (sections of your site) based on various types of internet advertising. Your site visitors select the tab that is appropriate to the advertising that they are looking for and then follow the information until they discover what they want to buy.

You earn an income very much the same way a magazine does, by selling ad space on your Web site. As your site gains more popularity, your advertising rates will increase as will the number of advertising options. By offering advertising based on budget or specific marketing styles, you can really help visitors to narrow down their search and choose something that is right for their business. To do this, you are going to need many different types of advertising options. Therefore, in the beginning you might want to offer a free month to allow advertisers to try out your site so that you can build up your business. Without any advertisers, you will not be able to offer much to the visitor. Once your site is up and running, consider writing as many articles about the importance of advertising and linking them to your Web site or hosting them on your site as content.

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Find the Best Web Hosting to Publish Your Web Site on the Internet

2008-11-07T13:25:00.001-08:00

By Reyes Ubiera

Are you starting your own Web Site? Are you looking to publish your Web Site? Are you changing Web Site Hosting service? It does not matter. I am using an Excellent Hosting Service for my Web Site. For you to get your Web Site up and running on the internet, you need a Publisher Service.

There are a lot of Web Hosting Sites on the internet. They have different prices and offers. You need to research and look for the one that fits your needs. After a lot of choices I decided to use a Good Service with Good Prices and an Excellent technical support. I like this Web Hosting Service because the Application that runs my Web Site on the internet it is user friendly and very easy to use.

When I did the research for Web Hosting services, I look for the best Prices and Offer for my needs. I recommend this Web Hosting service.

This service has an excellent live technical and live chat support 24/7. There is always somebody on the other side of the line to help you. Since I signed up to this Web Hosting Service I have had to call them a few times during off hours, at night, and I have always got in touch with a support person.

Start Logic is one of the top 10 best Web Hosting services, best value and other offers on the internet. (Others like Host Monster, Web Hosting Pad and Blue Host, are on the top 10 also, The Company that is hosting my Web Page is my number one choice)

So, what are you waiting for? If you need more information come and visit my Web Page. http://www.2winatsport.com/

Then click on Web Site Hosting link for more detail.

http://www.2winatsport.com/

Can Web Host Reviews Be Trusted?

2008-11-07T13:24:00.002-08:00

By Puripong Koomsin

If you are looking for a good web host and you have no idea about web hosting, I suggest you don't find it using a search engine. Type in 'cheap web host' or 'good web hosting' into Google and see how many hits you'll get. Nowadays, there's an abundance of web hosts giving out supposedly cheap deals and promotions.

So, how do you choose good web hosting? The only way, in this writer's humble opinion, to weed out web hosts with terrible service and performance, is to find good reviews. Reviews are, by far the only way to ensure that the service given by any web host lives up to their advertisements. But, this also begs you to answer another question. Can web hosting reviews be trusted?

The answer to that, in most cases, is no. Web hosts reviews are usually done by the company themselves, masquerading as another website. In other cases, the articles were done by writers who receive a huge sum of money when they write a sterling review on the host.

So, how do you find reviews that can be trusted? When looking for reviews on the internet, try to find a website that does reviews on all web hosts, instead of a specific one. For example, type in 'web host review' or 'review for web hosting' instead of "XXY web hosting review". This will decrease the chances of you entering a site where the reviews are biased towards to company.

But even then, you have to be careful. Although a review website might seem write reviews on many web hosts, all those hosts could just be a product of the same company. Find out as much as you can about the product before you read the review. Knowing the company will help you avoid dodgy review websites.

Another way to ascertain the excellence of a web hosting service is to join forums. Find a neutral third-party forum where the posts are more than just about web hosting. Sign up and post questions about where to find a good web host. Post new threads with titles such as 'Can web host reviews be trusted?' or 'Where can I find an unbiased review website?'

If you receive replies to you post, read them carefully. If they are too worded and unnatural, do not trust them. You should look for posts from long-time users who have also posted on other topics. A normal user should have non-formal language, abbreviations and grammatical mistakes in his post.

There are also advantages in trusting a web host review. These reviews can really help you choose a first-class web host. You shouldn't find hosts which offer you the cheapest deals, but find those who give the best service that fits your budget. Do not just read one review, but several from different websites on the same host.

So, the next time you find a review on web hosts, ask yourself this question, "Can web host reviews be trusted?".

If you enjoy reading this, you may enjoy to read more about Web Hosting Reviews and read HostMonster Reviews

Hosting Your Websites

2008-11-07T13:24:00.001-08:00

By Phil Boo

As a journalist I need to explore sections of the internet world and find out what works and what doesn't. Such investigations bring up new information that many aren't familiar with; on this occasion I interviewed one of my business associates who had some good news...

Richard Martin is an experienced businessman and is attempting to focus on bringing some of his 'offline businesses' onto the internet. The cost in doing so has restricted his progress, but in conversation, he told me of new technology that many are missing out on...

... He said, "First and foremost I am guilty... I know doubt have followed the same path as many are doing now. I have gradually grown from one website to over 10. Without knowing too much about the internet I foolishly hosted every new website either on a different hosting provider or with another account on the current provider and paid separately for each account.

So perhaps if I was paying $8 per month x 10 = $80, I paid this for some 18 months as I thought it was a necessary procedure. Until I understood how hosting providers work.

I worked with one hosting provider from my early days in 2001 and would have suggested them to everyone as I thought they were excellent. Good customer service, pretty much reliable and my websites were seen on the internet. No qualms, no problems and no hesitations.

Everything was hunky dory and I accepted the $80 per month for all my sites. Then when I read more I found that you can now find hosting providers that allow multiple websites in one account. Today most multiple providers suggest 10 websites for one monthly fee. Yet even better news is that because of competition some hosting providers allow unlimited websites. Initially their costing was that little bit higher, but even that has come down to compete with the mainstream providers.

So... Now I'm smiling all the way to the bank as my $80 per month has been reduced to just $7.95, for ALL of my websites. Isn't competition a beautiful thing... All my websites are hosted with a reliable hosting provider.

If you are using links between your sites then using one hosting provider may affect their linking strength, but when you're saving money that out weighs this benefit.

Beyond all the money saving possibilities this particular hosting provider claims to be totally 'green' and works of the power of the sun and wind. Not only am I getting a good deal, am I also being green..."

May I say Richard was rather enthusiastic about this conversation as his budget would remain at $80 for servicing his websites, but the remaining $72 would be spent on traffic improvements. I could see he was pleased.

So Richard which is the Hosting Provider you are referring to? Richard said, "Go to this link: http://www.globaltop5.com/web-hosting.html

I hope this information is helpful.

Mr. Phil Booker

Senior Internet Advisor and Journalist

This week's topic relates to this website:

http://www.globaltop5.com/web-hosting.html

Affordable Web Hosting 101 - Lesson 3 - How to Choose the Right Domain

2008-11-07T13:22:00.004-08:00

By Nicholas Halmond

Choosing the right domain name can make the difference between success and failure of your business' website. As the rate at which domain names are being bought up is set to increase exponentially in the next two years - the quicker you can make a decision and purchase, the better.Choosing the right domain should be as important as naming your product or entire company.

1. Keep it short. This makes it easier for people to remember.

2. Make it easy to spell. The easier it is to spell the easier to type and remember.

3. If the domain name you want is unavailable, add a hyphen. For example, if you want to use the domain name findagooddomain.com and that domain is already taken, try using findagood-domain.com

4. Choose the right keywords that describes more about what your website is about. You're site is better search engine optimized if you use a long tail keyword because there will be fewer webmasters who will choose them.Choosing the right domain name for your website is critical to your success.

5. You can use letters, numbers, and dashes, but no spaces. Also, domain names are not case sensitive.

6. Always try to use a .com domain. Do not use .net, .org, .gov, or any other type of domain.

7. Keep it professional. If your website is going to be about snowmobiles, do not use www.tedsnowmobiles.com. Avoid using your own name in the domain name. That looks unprofessional.

8. Register your domain name now! Thousands of domain names are being registered each day. Register yours now before someone else does!

We understand that it is not easy to just go and find the best host service out there. There are literally thousands of hosting companies on the market today. We have taken the time and put the effort into finding the best affordable web hosting services. We are careful to recommend only the most reputable web hosting companies. go to http://www.affordableweb-hosting.com/

Affordable Web Hosting 101 - Lesson 2 - How to Choose the Right Web Hosting Company

2008-11-07T13:22:00.003-08:00

By Nicholas Halmond

Finding the right web hosting is relevant to keeping your site alive and online. And one that offers a desirable package at an affordable price can be difficult and confusing. But there are a list of things you can look for to help guild you through in making the right decision.There are literally thousand of web hosting providers in the market today. And alot of them are pretty shady trust me. We will go though the main features you should be looking at while making your decision.

Uptime : You need a good host that is dependable, if there server is down your site is down. So look for a hosting company that has a good uptime record. I Personally use blue host for my hosting provider there uptime and reliability is outstanding. Never had a problem yet (knock on wood).

Server load time : is how fast your site will load, I don"t know about you but i really don"t like waiting for a web site or page to load up. normally i will not even stick around and wait for the site to load. All of my sites have a one second load up time and some of my pages are pretty big. So once again look for a provider that is dependable and reliable.

Hosting Features

control panel : allows domain owners to manage and monitor their web site.The cpanel is basically the back stage of your web site, were you can gain Access to server logs, get diskspace and bandwidth stats, Email account configuration, Maintaining FTP accounts, Managing databases, check Visitor statistics using web log analysis software, use file manager, html editor Plus most cpanels offer a wide selection of useful software for building a top notch web site. Like simple script, fantastico de lux , shopping carts.(ect).

Diskspace : is the amount of data you can store on a web hosts server. Each character in a document counts as one byte. Images can easily reach sizes of 100,000 bytes (100 kilobytes), with downloads exceeding 1,000,000 bytes (1 megabyte) easily. so look for a hosting company that offer higher disk space limitations.

Bandwidth : is the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time. On the Net, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or in higher units like Mbps (millions of bits per second). 28.8 modem can deliver 28,800 bps, a T1 line is about 1.5 Mbps. look for a hosting company that offer higher bandwidth limitations.

Domain : Most respectable hosting companies include the domain name in your hosting plan. so look to make sure it is included in the plan. Some hosting companies display a low price, then when you sign up they try to add a bunch of extra charges.

Well i hope this article gave you a better understanding on what to look for in a web hosting company. I recommend checking out affordable web hosting to review all the top rated web hosting companies out on the market. Plus check out some of the other affordable web hosting 101 lessons for more helpful info.

Affordable Web Hosting 101 - Lesson 1 - Understanding the Different Types of Web Hosting

2008-11-07T13:22:00.001-08:00

By Nicholas Halmond

Web hosting providers offer many different types of hosting like free web hosting, Shared, Reseller, Virtual Dedicated Server, Dedicated, Managed, Colocation, Clustered, Grid. By glancing through the list, you should get a better understanding on all the different hosting packages available online and which one is the right service for you.

Free web hosting service : is free, (sometimes) advertisement-supported web hosting, and is often limited when compared to paid hosting.

Shared Hosting : (My personal favorite) is a type of hosting where many web sites are hosted on same physical server. It is the cheapest and easiest way to get a web site up and running. Shared web hosting is perfect for web blogs, personal web pages, small forums, small business and e-commerce sites. Shared web hosting is ideal for establishing simple websites.

Reseller hosting : is a certain kind of web hosting where you buy server space, market it yourself, and sell it on to your own customers. Most of the resellers are web designers, consultants or marketers, who want to offer their customers a complete package with hosting included.

Virtual Dedicated Server : offer many of the capabilities and features of dedicated servers, including admin (root) access and dedicated IP addresses, but at a much lower price. However, as a virtual dedicated server is, indeed, virtually dedicated, the customer in fact shares the server space with a small number of other customers. Virtual dedicated servers meet the needs of web sites that have outgrown garden-variety shared hosting, but which don't yet justify the expense of their own dedicated server. Virtual dedicated servers come with an easy-to-use control panel that offers a highly powerful tool box that allows you easy access to powerful features.

Dedicated server : means you are renting an entire physical server for use all by yourself. Getting a dedicated server means you don't have to share system resources with other websites. Dedicated servers are most often housed in data centers , similar to colocation facilities , providing redundant power sources and HVAC systems. In contrast to collocation, the server hardware is owned by the provider and in some cases they will provide support for your operating system or applications.

Managed hosting : is usually more expensive since the web host will be responsible for managing and maintaining the dedicated server. Managed hosting service can be considered as an upgraded version of web hosting. The managed hosting provider takes the responsibility of hosting the clients website in a well managed way.Managed hosting firms can also help businesses change their network and systems, upgrading, adding options and extending solutions.

Colocation hosting : is like having a server on your own. With colocation you can save time and money because of using shared data infrastructure.Colocation hosting is the next best thing if you are willing to provide the server and manage it by yourself. If you don't have much experience or can't spend a lot of time managing the server or want to buy a server computer, dedicated hosting or a VPS is the best option.

Clustered Hosting : is a group of servers clustered in the same network to perform hosting services. The purpose of Clustered Hosting technology is to eradicate the troubles inherent in typical shared hosting infrastructures.

Grid hosting : is a new approach to a shared hosting environment. Instead of a few websites sharing one server, in the more classic shared environment, grid hosting is a bunch of websites all sharing a bunch of servers.

Well I hope this article gave you a better understanding on what web hosting service is right for you. And if you are still undecided or still need more information, Check out affordable web hosting 101 lesson 2 How to choose a good web hosting company.

Web Hosting - Optimise Your Online Presence

2008-11-07T13:21:00.006-08:00

By Naveen Kumar Gupta

How can a warrior even think of winning a war without the right set of weapons in the battlefield? If he tries doing so the consequence is not worth mentioning. The same thought can be applied to your online business and then probably you will be in a better position to understand what services your online business requires. Ever since the emergence of Internet (as a powerful marketing tool) and intelligent search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN amongst many, there has been an obvious intend to go global. Yes, it's a battlefield out there and there is no mercy. You have to make sure that you use the right mixture of services to win the battle. Needless to say Web Hosting is one of the most important ingredients.

You might have the best of websites with exotic design, unique features, smoothest of navigational structure just to name a few. But have you ever wondered how these aspects would actually benefit your online business unless you have a strong online presence to support it. Therefore web hosting services and solutions have become indispensable to empower your online presence. With plethora of web hosting service providers available choosing the right hosting partner may give you goose bumps. But the problem is not so hard to do away with. Since most of them provide more or less the same set of services it becomes imperative to decide which service to go for. Of course this would depend on lot of parameters like nature of business, target audience, expected traffic, etc.

To make your website available to a large customer base it is essential to host a site on a public server. Your own PC can be used as a web server but it is recommended to let a service provider host your site. Obvious reasons for this are excellent connection speed, powerful hardware, security and stability. Web hosting package often includes domain name registration and E-mail services.

While selecting your web hosting partner here's what you need to know about your very own business:

Disk space requirement

A small or medium website will require 10MB to 100MB of disk space. The size of each HTML page is generally between 5KB to 50 KB of the disc space on the server depending upon the use of images and other space consuming elements. Make sure you know your needs before on a lookout of the provider.

Monthly traffic

A small or medium web site will use 1GB and 5GB respectively of data transfer per month. By multiplying the average page size with the number of expected page views this can easily be calculated. Large commercial sites may consume around 100GB of monthly traffic. Before signing up with any provider make sure the package suits your business needs.

Connection speed

Visitors largely use modems to connect to the Internet to visit a website, but the host provider should have a much faster connection. We are not living in the pre-mature phase of the Internet where a T1 connection was considered fast enough. To get the feel of the speed, Surf other websites hosted on their server before entering into the agreement.

The commonly offered Web Hosting Services ranges from Free to Shared, Dedicated and Reseller hosting. Veracity in selecting the right service can obviate various potential risks.

List of do's before finalising your host partner. Check whether:

1)The hosting type suits your business needs.

2)The hosting package does justice to its cost.

3)Upgrading to a better server is a possible solution.

4)Upgrading to a dedicated server is possible, when required.

Webtree India offers affordable hosting services to suit all your web space requirements. More web space, upgraded servers, minimal downtime, quick activation, more traffic, advanced Internet marketing solutions...and the list goes on!

Log on to our website to check Web Hosting India and Domain Registration services.

Do You Need Dedicated Or Shared Web Hosting?

2008-11-07T13:21:00.005-08:00

By Naveen Kumar Gupta

It would not be wrong to say that Dedicated Web Hosting is the most sought after service among the three primary web hosting methods. As the name suggests, Dedicated Web Hosting provides a dedicated server for a single IP address. This results in better connectivity, high speed and error free network. Just as Dedicated Web Hosting is the choice of many, Shared Web Hosting is also a popular web hosting service that gives direct competition to Dedicated hosting. Therefore, to understand Dedicated Web Hosting better, it is pertinent to understand Shared Web Hosting.

Many a times, people are unable to weigh the pros and cons of Shared and Dedicated Web Hosting. The difference between the two doesn't lie in just being a paid and free service. There is much more that goes into these services. Shared Web Hosting has dozens, or may be hundreds of computer connections to its server, and obviously would have larger error risk than the Dedicated Web Hosting where one computer is linked with only one server. In Shared Web Hosting, the server uptime cannot be very reliable, though many companies provide high grade solutions. The error hunt-down and solution of the queries may also take time as there would be a long queue of computers who might have some technical or connectivity issue. You could be among the lasts in the queue and thus the query resolve session may take time. Even after considering these points, there still are many websites which are running successfully with Shared Web Hosting. With a medium sized business, you can keep your budget maintained by opting Shared Web Hosting.

Dedicated Web Hosting on the other hand has various advantages to its account, and is successfully opted by many website owners. If your website uses custom applications, has more number of web pages and higher traffic, you can no longer rely on Shared Web Hosting. A Dedicated server then becomes a must, with which you get the flexibility of administering and controlling the web server. As you are the only one who is sharing the resources such as hard drive space, bandwidth, processing speed, etc., the connectivity seems better, and your downtime is resolved easily. You also have a better administrative control in case some technical errors confront the internet connection. However, it requires no second thoughts that you need to pay a good price for dedicated servers, but with a large scaled online business, where a large number of visitors and potential buyers visit daily, can you take the risk of server downtime? Not really. And hence there are no real substitutes when it comes to Dedicated Web Hosting.

So whether you need Shared or Dedicated web hosting is something you need to decide. The magnitude of your online business and the size of your website could help you determine this.

Why You Need Paid Web Hosting

2008-11-07T13:21:00.003-08:00

By Mike Bowdenn

Lots of web hosting service providers are offering identical packages today. And hence it will be difficult for you to choose the right web hosting service for your web site. Choosing the best suited web hosting plan is very important for a smooth running web site. Due to unsuitability in the web hosting plan, one can face losses by decreasing sales, or even losing customers. There are some important factors that have to be considered before buying a web hosting solution.

Web hosting plans that are available on the Internet differ in their pricing. There are some free web hosting plans too. While free hosting plans are meant for personal, non commercial web sites, the paid ones will be good for business web sites. Free web hosting solutions always have certain kinds of restrictions, most unacceptable to any respectable business.

Disk Space or Storage Space Restrictions

As one's web site is a collection of files being offered on the Internet for viewing, it is necessary to store them somewhere for retrieval. These files are stored in the web servers offered by the web hosting service provider. Most of the free web hosting solutions offer a little storage space (say) 500 Mb or even less than that. This space will not be adequate for a business web site. Even a personal web site with many video and music files cannot be accommodated in so little space. Paid web hosting will let you get the desired server space for your files. If you need more space for storing files you can expand by paying a little extra.

Web Traffic restrictions

Business promotions can cause large amount of traffic flowing to a website. And that's what the business websites are meant for. However, the free hosting service providers allow only limited traffic to your website. Most of the free web hosts allow 5 GB (max) of traffic to your website. Once the traffic to your website crosses the limit, your website won't be visible to the public. The paid web hosts allow much greater traffic which is indispensable for business website

Email Account Restrictions

The free web hosting solutions often provide only 2-5 email accounts for the users. If your business organization needs email addresses assigned to all your employees, you will not be able to do that with the help of free hosts. Paid web hosts allow a greater number of user email accounts (at least 50) to be created.

No Tools and Applications

Paid web hosting packages include tools and applications that are needed to tweak or modify a website. The applications will be ready-made and can be used in a website with ease. The tools include virus protection, privacy tools, etc. None of these tools or applications will be available with the free hosting packages.

This is why you need paid hosting for creating a good web site.

The Author of this article is an expert on web technologies. He has been in the web hosting field for more than 6 years. With his extensive knowledge about web hosting and web design, he has helped many people pick the best suited web hosting package based on their needs. When it comes of web hosting companies, he prefers hosting.bygeekz.com

The Different Types of Web Hosting

2008-11-07T13:21:00.001-08:00

By Mike Bowdenn

Choosing the right web hosting entirely depends on your web site needs. There are lots of web hosting solutions that are available today. Therefore it is very important to research and evaluate the different web hosting services to pick the correct one. in this article is an explanation of the different web hosting solutions that are available today.

The Common - Shared Hosting & Dedicated Hosting:

If you take a glance at the Internet, you will see that most of the web hosting companies offer Shared and dedicated web hosting.

Shared Web Hosting

Shared web hosting is also known as mass hosting or virtual hosting. If you wish to save some cash, shared hosting will be the best option for you. The working principle of shared hosting is simple. Your content and applications are placed on a server which is shared with other customers who also use that web host. The equipment and server are owned and managed by the web host provider, with technicians on hand to monitor and manage the servers. Speaking about the drawbacks of Shared web hosting, Spamming and blacklisting from different search engines is the major problem. These kinds of problems arise due to the reason that shared web hosting assigns one particular IP address for several web sites. However, most people prefer shared hosting because it's cheaper than other types.

Dedicated Web Hosting

Dedicated hosting is a much more sophisticated type of web hosting when compared to shared hosting. This type of hosting allows you to rent an entire server yourself and have access to all its resources to host one or more web sites. Either you or your web host owns the equipment. This is decided on a number of factors, differing from company to company. The downside of dedicated hosting is that dedicated servers will run you generally $50 per month or more while shared hosting can be purchased for as little as $5 a month. This makes a dedicated hosting plan the ideal package for companies with larger, high-traffic web sites who need total control over the hosting environment.

Apart from these, there are other web hosting solutions based on the operating systems. They are Unix hosting and windows hosting. UNIX is an operating system originally developed for servers and networking. Until now many different versions of UNIX have been written by programmers around the world under the open-source protocol, meaning that the code for the operating system is openly available so as to enable programmers to customize and make improvements when and where necessary. The two most popular forms of UNIX are Linux and BSD. There are several varieties, like Red Hat Linux, Debian, SuSE, and FreeBSD. Another very popular operating system developed by Microsoft is Windows operating system, Windows Server 2003. Several scripting languages like ASP, ASP.NET, and Cold Fusion, will only run on a Windows server. Windows hosting are costlier than Unix hosting and this is the only drawback assuming performance is equal.

We hope that this article has given you an idea of which web hosting is suitable for your website.

The Best Web Hosting Affiliate Programs

2008-11-07T13:20:00.005-08:00

By Maurice Snell

What is the best web hosting affiliate program on the web today? The answer to this question is going to be as varied and hotly contested as the thousands of opinions about the best web hosting company out there.

There really isn't a simple answer, if indeed there is any definitive answer at all, to either question.

As an affiliate there are hundreds of hosting companies who will pay you to promote their business. Some will reward you very well whilst others will barely pay you the price of a fast food lunch. With that in mind it seems fair to equate the dollar amounts you can earn with the attractiveness of the hosting affiliate program in question. Let's face it, why accept a commission of $10 when others are offering you $100 or even more?

But is this the only golden rule likely to affect your success as a web hosting affiliate? In a word, no. With all the competition out there for not only your patronage as a customer, but also as an affiliate, hosting companies need to offer attractive deals for both.

For you, as an affiliate, the first thing you need to establish is that you need to be working with a trustworthy, established company, preferably one that pays a decent level of commission. This is not an easy choice to make, because even when you think you have found the perfect company, you will also find plenty of negative comments about them online. The deeper you dig into the world of web hosting, the more you will realize that the online world is absolutely overloaded with nay sayers and complainants in respect of web hosting.

You have to remember that many people buy hosting that is completely unsuited to their needs, often because they have little idea of what their needs are likely to be. It is also very easy, in this day and age of instant gratification, for people to fire off an email or forum post in a fit of temper because of often minor irritations perceived to be the fault of their hosting company. They complain about response times, they complain about billing, downtime and server issues that affect their websites, even if a little patience would likely see the problems resolved. Yes, there are bad hosts out there as well as good ones, but often the loudest anti web hosting voices are perhaps not the ones to listen to for rational and balanced opinion.

I read a complaint recently from a man stating that hosting company A, his host, was more expensive than hosting Company B, and used that as a reason for switching. Sounds fair enough, but with hosting you usually find you get what you pay for and often, comparing two services is like comparing apples and oranges. On this occasion, the customer was moving from one deal to a completely different one and if you compared the two, you would see that he was getting far less than he was with his original host (with whom he had not had any problems). Should he run into problems with the new company he will complain very loudly, even though he could possibly have foreseen that buying a cheaper service would not provide the things he took for granted previously. So, who is really to blame? A hosting company that sets out the features of their service for all to see, or the customer who does not read them. That customer could soon be answering his own question about why his host was so much more expensive than his new one.

The point is, as an affiliate, just as a customer, you will never find a perfect hosting company.

When seeking the companies you feel you would like to work with, it is wise to check for large volumes of negative publicity and complaints, but don't take too much notice of a few sour comments from sour people.

Additionally, I would always recommend trying to find at least one company that is prepared to pay you recurring commissions. Yes, it is possible. The vast majority of hosting companies will pay you a one time referral fee, but there are those who will pay you for the lifetime of the referred customer. For you, this means regular monthly payments that will continue to roll in until the customer cancels their hosting.

That has to be a better deal for any affiliate. You may get a one off $100 commission from one company and that's nice, but if another is willing to pay you $10 every month your potential earnings are far greater, and, you don't have to keep doing the work. It's the classic residual income situation. As an affiliate, there is no reason why you cannot mix both types of affiliate program into your promotional strategies.

There is one hosting company that takes the recurring monthly commissions a few steps further and offers a multi tier compensation plan. In other words, you will not only be paid for your direct customers, but also for the customers they refer. Even better, they structure the affiliate program in a way that means even affiliates who do little in the way of bringing in new customers can still earn money from customers who are brought in by people above them in the affiliate "team". It's almost MLM, but it's genuine and enables the company's affiliates to cover the cost of their own hosting quite easily, effectively giving them free web hosting and furthermore, the potential to earn a very decent monthly income.

Whoever you choose to work with as an affiliate, the market is intensely competitive and selling hosting is not the easy money you might think. Having said that, commission levels are high and there is definitely money to be made. If you are seeking the definitive answer to the question "which is the best web hosting affiliate program?" It is unlikely that you will ever find it, the answers having far too much to do with consumer opinion.

The author runs the CaymanHost Web Hosting Directory where you will find many hosting offers, articles, opinions and comments. To find out more about the multi tier hosting affiliate program mentioned in this article visit the Kiosk.ws Web Hosting Affiliate Program Review at the author's hosting and marketing blog

How Web Hosting Can Help You Or Your Business in a Downturn Economy

2008-11-07T13:20:00.003-08:00

By Marion Pollan

According to the majority of you guys web hosting is a liability, not an expense because once you spend your money on hosting, it is already used up and it never comes back. So most people find the cheapest business web hosting thinking it will save them more money in the long run without any headaches. But the reality is buying cheap web hosting will hurt you in the long run because of terrible customer service and downtime which you would not get with better business web hosting. So back to the original question, how can web hosting help you. Web hosting can help you by allowing you to run your side business or a hobby - something that you enjoy while you are working. Having a website on the side is easy to maintain and should help you in the long run because you can work a little bit on it daily and since you enjoy doing it it isn't work. For example, a lot of people run car audio review sites even though their day job is teaching. So how does that help? It helps because when their hours get cut or when they lose their job they have something to fall back on which is important.

In a downturn economy, a lot of workers lose their jobs because of declining profits by major corporations and the lack of spending by the consumer . When workers lose their job, they either look for another job or they just stay at home waiting for a phone call to return to work. But instead of doing any of those actions, they need to purchase a web hosting account and start a hobby and have their own business. By having their own business they should be able to supplement their normal income with income from their newhobby site which couldn't have been done if they never created their own website.

Each website can act as its own business. In many ways, a website is like a real estate property. By having a lot of different websites, you are having a lot of real estate properties, so when real estate prices fall in one sector it may gain in another sector and you won't lose out. For example, you may have a website that deals with printer ink or another that deals with women's clothing. These are just several options that you can have so when women's fashion are dying like in this bad economy, you will still have the sales from the printer ink since these are more inelastic than women's luxury clothing. Elastic meaning more sensitive to price change.

With the revolution of the internet, web hosting has made it easier for individuals to start their own business with just a few simple mouse clicks and some writing and designing skills. But even now most people just purchase templates from major companies. There is huge demand for internet websites since more people now are embracing the internet for price comparison and research of products. People now are more knowledgeable than in the past.

So do not fear if there is any downtime in the economy. You can fix that problem by creating your own business website. If people don't come just create another one. It does not hurt. Most web hosting companies even offer unlimited domain hosting on their web hosting so you can have unlimited websites on a single account like business web hosting by bluehost. If you never try you never know if you would have succeeded in utilizing the most powerful tool in generating revenue. It never hurts to try even if you are old.

Marion Pollan is a writer at Upperhost Web Hosting Reviews. The site provides independent reviews on the best web hosting ratings along with the latest articles and news on the industry.

Why Virtual Hosts Are Not Safe

2008-11-07T13:20:00.001-08:00

By John Parks

Individuals who are looking to create and maintain their own website find themselves faced with a very difficult decision: what kind of webhost or server to use. Some people opt to host the website themselves, as well, on their own private servers. While this is a great (and preferred) option for large companies and businesses, this option just isn't feasible for the majority of computer users who are looking for website hosting. This is why these people turn to the internet to find the right company for their webhosting needs; and one of the more popular types of webhosting services is known as virtual hosting.

Through virtual hosting, multiple websites and domain names are hosted on one single server. This helps webhosting companies keep consumer costs low, as the need for multiple, expensive servers is eliminated. While this is becoming more common in the industry of webpage hosting, it does have its drawbacks - and one of the biggest is the issue of internet safety.

More webmasters and webpage hosts are becoming concerned with viruses and malicious web-based attacks; and rightfully so. Attacks such as this can cause companies to lose valuable data including customer records, employee records, and much more. These kinds of attacks can take many hours, even days to fix, and can end up cost a company quite a bit of money to get things back to normal. Because of this security has become a top priority to many. And for most of these people, the security offered by virtual webhosts is just not enough to meet their needs.

Because several different (unrelated) websites may be located on one server, malicious computer attacks or viruses that are aimed at one particular site may end up affecting the entire server. Now not only is the original target company paying for these attacks, but other sites that may have nothing to do with yours will have to deal with the same problems. This is what turns many people away from using a virtual host for their website.

Virtual webhosts are still an effective tool that can be used within a specific company or workplace, but by no means should it be used to transmit sensitive data out of one specific building. As long as all of the data and information on your virtual webhost is being shared only throughout your immediate organization, security is not that big of a concern - unless of course, you have a rogue employee.

There are many different options when it comes to finding a webhost for either your personal site or a company website; a virtual host is only but one choice. While many people find it meets their needs and specifications just fine, the security issues involved with virtual webhosting simply cannot be denied. If you are in need of a bulletproof security system to protect your company's network, you should definitely look elsewhere. However, if you are looking to create a small, local network to share information with a handful of employees, a virtual webhost can achieve this effectively while still keeping your initial investment at an absolute minimum.

For more information on webhosting, visit http://www.domainhostingvirtual.com/

Know Your Server Options

2008-11-07T13:19:00.000-08:00

By John Parks

When it comes to hosting a website or web page, there are a variety of options available. Depending on the exact kind of services required, however, the costs and fees to hosting your website on a remote server can add up very quickly. One option that many people do not consider is hosting your site on one of the many virtual private servers available today.

A virtual private server is actually a shared network - though it doesn't seem that way. Each user on the network is allocated a certain amount of system resources; and there is no way for any one user to go over this amount (as is the case with other, similar network setups). But there are a number of advantages to using shared virtual private servers - and this article examines just a few of these reasons.

You may think that by sharing a virtual private server will make your website vulnerable to even more web attacks than it already is. However, this is not at all the case. Each user is effectively blocked from one another, so nobody has access to files that belong to another. Because of this, web attacks affecting one particular website on the network will not affect your website at all. As previously stated, there is no way of telling what other websites are sharing your virtual private server - internet hackers and malicious web users cannot tell, either. In this sense, most virtual private servers are even more secure than a dedicated web server because the file systems can vary greatly from one website to another.

Another advantage to sharing a virtual private server is that users can typically install their own applications and web services onto your server. Again, this does not affect any other websites on the virtual private server, and is a great way to add extra functionality to your website that isn't already offered by your virtual private server host.

But the biggest advantage to sharing a virtual private server with other websites is the cost. Because one server can be used to accommodate many different users, costs can be kept at a minimum. Companies will not have to purchase quite as many different servers, and they will save money on their electricity bills, as well. This savings of course all gets passed down to the consumer, and results in cash savings for everybody involved.

If you are considering hosting your own website, sharing a virtual private server is a very viable option. You will want to make sure that you are fully aware of any server side restrictions, such as maximum amount of CPU and network resources available, but many virtual private server hosts provide more than enough for nearly any website. There are a variety of different webhosting companies that offer virtual private servers - if you are in need of this type of service, you should have no problem whatsoever finding a great company on the World Wide Web. A quick internet search will yield thousands of potential results for you to choose from, allowing you to pick the one that is best for you.

For more information on virtual private servers, visit http://www.sharedvirtualprivateserver.com/

How to Upload Files Using an FTP Client

2008-11-07T13:18:00.004-08:00

By John Browning

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, it is a protocol that is used to transfer files over a network (or from your computer to the webserver that is hosting your website). FTP clients are applications that let you transfer files using FTP. Most FTP clients offer drag-n-drop functionality i.e. you don't have to type commands from your keyboard to upload files. All you have to do is to select the file using your mouse and drag and drop and it will get uploaded/downloaded automatically. Most FTP clients also offer other handy tools like a HTML editor, SSH (Secure Shell) support, etc.

This is a small tutorial about uploading files to your webserver using an FTP client. This is very simple and you can figure it out yourself. This tutorial is meant for the total newbie (Don't get offended! I was once a newbie too!) who is starting with a blank slate.

Here is how you proceed:

Step 1: Download an FTP client

The first step is to download an FTP client. There are many free FTP clients available, and so running a search in Google will turn up many websites that provide free FTP clients. We will use a client called "FileZilla". This is an open source project and so is free. It can be downloaded from Sourceforge. Download the version that is meant for Windows (or according to the OS you have). Install it by clicking on the downloaded file.

The file is about 2.9 MB in size, depending on your Internet connection speed it will take only a few seconds to download it.

Step 2: Obtain your FTP details

In order to upload files via FTP, you will need the following details:

FTP address: This is usually your domain name. Sometimes, it can be an IP address.
FTP username: This is usually the username you use while you sign for a hosting account. However, it can also be the first 8 letters of your primary domain name.
FTP password: This is password you use while you sign up.

It is possible to create new FTP accounts by logging into your webhosting control panel. You can specify your own username and password.

When you sign for a hosting account, you will be provided with ftp details in the welcome email. However, if you still have problems locating the FTP details, write an email to your hosting company or call their support center. They will help you.

Step 3: Connect to your webserver using FTP

Fire up FileZilla and then enter your details into the appropriate fields.

In the field that says "Host", enter the ftp address.

Similarly enter your username and password.

In the field that says "port", enter 21 (The FTP client will use port 21 to connect through FTP). Click on "Quickconnect" and you will get a welcome message.

This means you are connected.

Step 4: Navigate to the correct folder

Once you are connected, your next step would be to navigate to the correct folder. This will depend on the type of hosting you have. If you have a cpanel based hosting you should navigate to "public_html" or "www". In some other types of hosting there will be a folder named after your domain, you should navigate to that instead. To navigate to a folder, just double click on it and it will open up.

Step 5: Upload the files

Navigate to the folder containing the files you want to upload. Suppose, I have the files on D:, I will click on D: and it will open up the folder. I will click on the folder again and it will open up the files.

Navigate to the correct folder on the webserver. Now, click on the file to be uploaded once and drag and drop it to the folder on the webserver. You file will get uploaded automatically.

That is it! This is that simple!

Step 6: Verify the uploaded file

After the file has been uploaded, you should always verify that the file has been uploaded properly. You can do this by pointing your web browser (Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) to the url corresponding to the file.

If something has gone wrong, upload the file again and check again. Also check the name of file for any typos.

FileZilla is NOT the only FTP client around. There are many others, but their interface is almost the same. So this small how to should work with other FTP clients as well.

For more information visit: Internet Blog and Free spyware removal.

Dedicated Server Purchasing Guide - Things You Need to Know When Choosing a Dedicated Server

2008-11-07T13:18:00.003-08:00

By Jim A Hawkins

Why do you need a dedicated server?

The very first step in purchasing a dedicated server should be ensuring that you actually need a dedicated server. There are many other hosting options to be considered including shared hosting and virtual servers. At Anchor we see three independent reasons why customers may require a dedicated server, these are:

Performance

Control

Security

Performance

There are two reasons why performance becomes a factor in deciding to go to a dedicated server. The first is that the application has to date been hosted on a shared (or virtual server) environment and the load on the application has proved to be too high - ie - the hosting company has told you that you need your own server.

The second reason is that the application you're hosting is very dependent on consistently fast response times. In a shared environment by definition you are using a shared resources, sometimes, not often, other users on the server can cause your site to slow down. If this can't be tolerated then application performance can be a good reason to go to a dedicated server.

Control

If you need control over the server to do things that you can't do on a shared server then you are often forced into going dedicated. Control is usually in terms of the ability to perform configuration on the server yourself without restriction. If you want to be able to log in as an administrative or root user then you will need a dedicated server to gain this level of control.

Unless you are on a dedicated server, you surrender a degree of control of the server to the hosting company. This has the advantages of ensuring all changes are made by professional Systems Administrators but there are the disadvantages that if you are a budding Admin yourself, you have to wait for someone else to make changes on your behalf.

Security

While shared servers are locked down to very high levels, the very fact that the server is accessible to other authorised users does introduce increased security risks in respect to host compromises. On a dedicated server you can be sure that any security breaches will only be a result of your own actions and not of somebody else.

Hardware specifications

The first thing that comes to mind for most people when deciding on a dedicated server specification is the hardware. You can see it and touch it so it's an easy starting point. Choosing the right hardware on day one is critical to make sure that you find that balance between not over specifying and hence wasting money and not under specifying and hence finding you need to do an upgrade too soon.

Every application is different and so the loads that it will place on a server are very difficult to estimate. Pages, hits, visitors, data transfer/month can all act as a guide but the variability in load from one application to another can be so significant (and implementation-specific) that these figures might not tell you much.

Hardware components

Let's have a look at the core hardware components in your server so you can see which ones warrant consideration when specifying a server. This table only attempts to discuss the components in the context of your ability to upgrade them in future, and the effect of the failure of this component on the delivery of services.

Availability monitoring

Depending on the service you purchase, your dedicated hosting provider will to varying degrees be responsible for monitoring the availability of your service.

If you need to know when services are going up or down it is important that your service provider is able to provide you with these reports. You should check for email or SMS based alert options.

Bandwidth

Most dedicated servers come with an initial data transfer allowance. This can vary anywhere from a few GB's in Australia through to a terabyte on offer by some overseas hosting providers.

Before you get carried away with choosing the host with the most bandwidth, try to work out how much bandwidth you actually need, then make sure the hosting package you're choosing meets that requirement.

Providers that offer excessively high bandwidth allocations may not always be the best choice. They may also be attractive to other high bandwidth clients that subsequently cause congestion on the network, or relate to a service that is not providing the same quality of bandwidth as other providers.

In comparing the bandwidth allocation, our article on [[planning/dedicated-colocation-data-billing-modelsdedicated server bandwidth billing models]] may also be of assistance.

Reporting

While the server specifications are an easy component to identify in the selection process, there are other important things to make sure you get with your managed server.

Data reporting

Most dedicated servers will come with a base data usage allocation. Anything exceeding that, however, will attract excess usage charges.

It's important that you do monitor your usage to make sure it's in line with your business expectations, and that you have the ability to easily monitor it.

Look for a web based interface that allows you to query your usage stats when you need them. Ideally look for something that gives inbound as well as outbound data usage figures. If there is no online interface, online reports should also do the job.

Support

Support is by far the most difficult component of a dedicated server package to accurately compare when choosing between hosts. To make this worse - support is actually the major point of interaction that you will have with your hosting company after the service is provisioned. The bit that will make the difference in what you get out of the hosting service will be the day to day interaction that you have with the hosting company.

We like to consider the provision of managed hosting services as a combination of three components:

Hardware: the actual server hardware provisioned for you - as discussed above.

The Environment: consisting of the Data Centre, the network and ancillary shared services that go into keeping the hosted services online.

Support: the ongoing management of the software on your server.

The reason that most people use a managed hosting service is that they have an application that they need to be kept online 24 x 7, with as close to 100% uptime as possible. This goal cannot be achieved without a lot of work, the same way that you can't expect a car to always run without fault without proper routine servicing. The higher the demands that are placed on the service, the more maintenance that will be required. To continue the analogy - consider the significant difference in maintenance of your family sedan with a race car.

If you're buying a managed server - it's important to make sure that you're not just getting hardware, but also the level of support that is right for you. If you don't, you can be assured that it will either turn up in the form of consultancy fees after you've signed the contract, or worse yet, you'll suffer from outages as a result of the much needed maintenance not being carried out.

We often think of the support that is needed to maintain uptime as consisting of three core components:

Prevention

Detection, and

Response

The more preventative work that is undertaken and systems that are monitored, the greater the chances of picking up changes to a service before they result in outages.

When considering alternative dedicated hosting providers, find out exactly what level of support is included in the quoted monthly charges and what services will attract additional fees.

Depending on your level of skills or interest in performing systems administration tasks, you need to make sure that the right level of service is being provided to keep the server online.

Typical support and maintenance tasks that you should ask about are:

Firewall & Security
- Is a firewall configured on the server or on a dedicated firewall device?
- Who is responsible for maintaining it and making configuration changes?
- Are there any systems in place to detect if the security of my server gets compromised?

Application and security updates
- Will security updates and patches for the programs and operating system be applied to my server?
- How often will updates be applied?
- What time of day will the updates applied?
Monitoring
- What services will monitoring cover?
- How frequently does the monitoring system poll the services?
- What reporting is provided for monitoring?
- What response is provided to problems when they are detected?
- What will happen if my application isn't working but the monitoring system detects no problems?
Application installation
- What applications will be installed at the time the server is built?
- What happens if I need additional applications installed at a later date?
Configuration management
- Who is responsible for making configuration changes to the server?
- Do changes cost each time or are they included in the monthly fees?
Provision of support services
- Can I call and have questions answered over the phone or will I have to email all support requests?
- Will I be able to talk directly with the support staff that build and maintain my server?
- What is the typical turn around time on non-urgent/urgent support requests?
Performance
- If my application is running slowly will you help to diagnose the problem?
- Do you collect any data on server load trends over time?

Ideally your hosting provider will be able to offer you with a support pack that covers either the rudimentary tasks required to keep your server secure, or better yet, the services that are needed to meet your expectations of support.

Any such support pack that is offered for a fixed monthly fee will have a defined scope to avoid it costing the hosting company too much money in the case of the more demanding clients. Find out what the scope is, or what the limits are if you're choosing a support pack. Make sure they are documented as part of the contract.

Visit Anchor dedicated servers for more useful information like this on Australian dedicated servers and dedicated hosting services.

How Do You Define the Best Web Host?

2008-11-07T13:18:00.001-08:00

By Jason Chao

There are millions web pages you can get from Google search results when you are searching keyword of "web hosts". If you are looking for a web hosting provider, thousands of them are on the market; but you need only one - the best web host.

Here is the problem, from a number of web hosts, how do you know who is the best one? In other words, how do you define the best web host? Is the cheapest one the best? Is the largest one the best? There are many factors need to take into consideration.

Most fitting your websites need

Before you define the best web host, you need to know your website first. If you have a small personal website just with few pages and simple striping, you don't need to think about using VPS or dedicated hosting service. Probably a cheap hosting or even a free web hosting will be the best choice for you. If you have a big e-commerce website with many functions, cheap host may not good enough. So certainly know what kind of website you have that will help you define the best web host.

Offering reliable hosting services

Reliability is the key to success on internet. The best web host should have solid infrastructure and technology system. This is the foundation of uptime guarantee and satisfaction guarantee. If a web host can not guarantee its uptime and don't give you at least 30 days money back guarantee, you absolutely need to move to other hosting providers. The 99.9% uptime is the minimum level for a quality web hosting service. If your website is frequently down, you will lose visitors and businesses.

Providing 24/7 telephone customer support

Some web hosts just offer email or online ticket support for their hosting services. This is not acceptable. If a web hosting company has no 24/7 telephone support, it is not worth to take the risk to use its service. When websites get troubles, some body from the technical support team should be always available to solve the problems. 24/7 telephone support is absolutely an important criteria of defining the best host.

Offering competitive price

If two web hosting companies offer same hosting services, the one that offers cheaper price is better than the other one. Under same hosting service conditions, the low cost price hosting means that you will get more investment return. Many web hosting providers offer expensive price for same hosting solutions with others. They can not be the best.

When you understand how to define "the best web host", it's not hard to choose the best one from thousands of web hosting providers. The best web host will give you solid reliability, highest level customer support, and the best price value.

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

How to Get Ahead Against a Sea of Competitors

2008-11-07T13:17:00.004-08:00

By David A Dunlap

If you are a Web Host you have a lot of competition, more so if you are a new Host. The sheer amount of Hosts and resellers are, as yet, incalculable. Their audience is the billions of people across the globe who want to run a Web site, whether for personal or business reasons. You may say, "Well there are billions of people I can reach, I can be successful just by starting up a Web host service and saying here, I am." Well think again.

There maybe be millions of Web Hosts out there, but there are a vast number of hosts who fail. The difference between success and failure is not up to chance, but up to you in identifying how you will fight for those customers. At the end of the day, there are those who have successfully fought this war of commerce and those who are causalities. If you apply the following principles, you too will be in the list of the former and not in the latter.

Building a Niche for your Company

When marketers say you need to create a niche or build a niche for your company it is not just throwing marketing jargon at you, hoping you will think that they are smart. It's the fundamental principle of being successful. It involves knowing your company, your service, and clientele. If there are one hundred thousand Web Hosts out there that provide the same service you do, then you must compete against a one-hundred thousand Hosts, all things being equal, you will fail.

Specializing is the key to developing a niche. What can you do that the others cannot do? Or, even more simply, what can you do that few Hosts can? The more you specialize the more the target audience you cater too decreases, but the more your competition melts away. Let us look at the previous scenario, adding in this key principle.

You are a Budget Host who has one hundred thousand competitors. Now you decide that you understand how to help SMBs (small to mid-sized businesses) and you found a way to add database management services into your hosting packages. Instead of simply catering to their Web site you can help them put their human resources databases online.

Now instead of having one hundred thousand competitors you have ten thousand, which is more manageable, but still daunting. Since your new target audience is SMBs, what else can help them succeed? How about we add in collaboration services, product and service planning management tools, and maybe giving them a good email tool that works with mobile devices and is Web accessible to your list of services. These things do not come cheap so you increase the plan cost or allow your clients to opt- in these new services. Now your audience is SMBs who require tools that will help them with freelance employees, employees who work a lot on the road, or employees who work out of the home.

Your audience has decreased slightly, but the amount of competitors you face is now an easy hundred instead of the original one hundred thousand. That is what we mean when we say specialize and building a niche. By adding targeted services, you specialize your company, decreasing your competition, and you create a focus niche for your service.

Creating a Brand

Another catch phrase used in marketing is creating a brand. Like building a niche, creating a brand has many useful applications. For this, we will look to Layered Technologies. Layered has an excellent brand name that conveys a specific meaning to the customer. Layered means several abstract places conveying differing levels of depth. Technologies means a system of applied knowledge used to bring about aid and utility in a specific field. Layered Technologies provides their customers a series of levels that aids them in their endeavors. Now the cool part. By adding the term layer to the brand names, Layered Technologies can give the customer a system with a specific purpose. GridLayer and LayeredX being too examples of solutions targeted at a market that imparts the purpose of the brand and identifies it with the company.

A brand is merely a focus for the customer to identify with. It is a name, a motto, a logo, anything that imparts meaning to a product or service for the purposes of the customer to look at it at a glance and say I know what that is. Brand names should imply benefits and impart meaning.

When we need something to clean our ears we don't say, "I need a cotton swab." We say, "I need a Q-Tip." The cotton swab could be a generic Wal-Mart type, but it will always be a Q-Tip in our minds. When we do a search for a site, we do not say, "I am going to use a search engine and find what I am looking for." We say, "I am going to google it." That is the pinnacle of branding. When the name of a brand circumvents the actual name of the product, then you know you have achieved greatness.

You do not have to circumvent a product's name to achieve success. What you do need to do is get the name of your service into the customer's head.

It starts with a single focus, the company. Our SMB hosting company is doing good so far, but it needs a good motto so when we look at the name we can get a micro version of what it means. Since it is targeted at businesses, the motto should be too. SMB Hosting means business. This motto has two definitions. It states that our host company is for businesses and the phrase "means business" has the connotation that our company does not fool around.

Now the services we off need to follow suit. Naming them A, B, and C hosting plans is nice and all, but if a customer looks at that they will scratch their heads saying what's the difference. So we give them a name that helps the customer connect. A hosting plan is the ground floor plan. It has the lowest price, but an excellent array of features. So to brand it, we will call it Startup. A customer will now say, "I have a startup company that must be the plan I need." This is how branding works it gives meaning to something for proper identification at a glance. Plan B was designed for companies who have an active group of employees who work far from the office. To further push that message we will call it the Road Warrior. It defines the plan as being for those who have employees on the road away from the front office. Warrior can be plugged back into the motto. We mean business, and warriors do not come to play tiddley winks. Plan C was designed for brick and mortar stores to have an online store. We will call that B&M Online. A brick and mortar store that is online.

With a few words, we convey a paragraph worth of meaning to potential customers allowing them to say, "Hey I know what I need." That is the benefits of branding, a world of meaning in a tiny space.

Position yourself as an expert in your field

You have found your niche market, you have created a brand, now comes the question; "why should I Host with you?" It's fine that you think yourself to be an expert, but to the customer you must prove that you are. Once you establish yourself as an expert you shoot past your competitors as far as a "ranking" system goes. Instead of having one hundred competitors you are now lumped into the experts of your field were you enjoy only ten or twenty competitors, possibly less.

Why is Yahoo Hosting, Verio, and 1&1 Hosting so popular? Why do they get clients when you believe you offer better services? It is because the customer already knows them as experts. Yahoo has been doing this whole Internet thing for years obviously, they know what they are doing. Verio has been catering to business for years they must know what they are doing. 1&1 is a large company, they advertise in the top magazines, so they must be doing something right and therefore they are experts. Success is a means to become an expert, but there are other ways:

Write useful articles. An article is a means to convey data and your interpretation of that data. In other words, you have knowledge about a subject and through that knowledge; you explain how it will help the audience. Writing articles is the basis for developing an expert persona. Make sure the articles you write are informative and accurate. Have your employees weigh in on the articles too. Someone may know something you are missing or they may give you a key element that helps present the information more effectively. Start posting these articles on your site, information sites, blogs (guest blogging is all the rage now), and in forums. Alternatively, use these articles for the basis of a discussion.

Help communities reach their goals. Going back to our example, if you want SMBs to buy your services go to them and help them attain their goals. If a business wants to understand how they can transition from brick and mortar to an online presence, then tell them how. If there is any lessons we have learned from Web 2.0 it is this; branding is a two way street. On the one end, we tell the customer what the brand is and on the other end customers tell each other what the brand is. By helping potential customers without selling them your service, (a simple signature for a forum post with your company's name, URL, and motto is sufficient) you have the customers telling each other how good you are. Visit forums, blogs, community hubs that focus on your niche and help in any way you can. Put your name out there and you will be rewarded. Not only will you present that you are an expert to the audience, but that audience will talk to each other about how helpful and knowledgeable you are.

Advertise in places were experts hang out. Riding coat tails has worked for decades in many fields, advertising is no different. 1&1 Hosting advertises in the major computer magazines and web sites. By doing so, a potential customer links them with those magazines and sites. PC Magazine has a great reputation and by proxy, their advertisers share in that reputation. Even if you do not have the money for advertising with big names you can still use this principle. Forums, blogs, niche print magazines, niche web sites, places were the experts go can be a place to advertise and you will find that these areas will be a lot cheaper than advertising with the big businesses. To get more bang for your buck, advertise on those places where you don't have a huge presence (forums you do not post in, blogs that you do not have guest articles at).

Host events that highlight knowledge. Events that bring in other experts shows the audience your pull in the industry. They don't have to be large events, they don't even have to cost more than the bandwidth to Host, in fact they might not even cost that much. To make an event you could build a trade show like HostingCon (which would cost you a ton of money) or you can make something much simpler. You have all the information you need if you have been writing useful articles; you have the experts you need if you have been helping communities. All you need is a good web cam, a good audio recording system, and one room with your logo display prominently in the background. Web conferences and podcasting can be your ticket to becoming an expert. Do a little research, practice within your company, and soon you will be hosting your own events that can be broadcast to a large audience, from your Web site or from a site such as YouTube.

Make evangelists of your service. Take a page out of the Microsoft playbook. Microsoft has a group of employees that do nothing but talk about the positives of their company. They are called evangelists and for good reason. These employees know the service in and out and have a very upbeat and positive attitude that is infectious. They praise their company, but do not disparage the competition. They aid the company by positioning it as an industry leader and spread the good news about that company across the Net and throughout trade shows. Now you are probably saying, "I don't have the money to spend on employees who simply talk and are happy all the time." But you do. At first, you will be the evangelist for your company. Take Aussie Bob as an example. The guy is a great figurehead for Dotable, when he is on the forums everyone knows him and he is always happy and willing to help. Make inroads with bloggers. If you can convince several bloggers that your services are the best (and can prove it) they will become your evangelists. This is a grassroots effort at its very heart. It costs no money only time.

These principles can be applied to any industry. Just because I am writing them on the Web Host industry does not mean that are only specific to Web Hosts. In any commercial endeavor you do all of these rules apply with equal meaning. Look at your successful competitors and take note of what they do to succeed. Take that information, applying to what we have discussed here and some day, your competitors will look at how you achieved your success.

David Dunlap has been both a Web host industry analyst and commentator for the past eight years. Prior to his active writing career, David was a network and communications technician for four years. He currently is the Editor-in-Chief for http://www.WebHostMagazine.com

The Weaknesses of Shared Hosting Your Providers Will Never Tell You

2008-11-07T13:17:00.003-08:00

By Daren Albom

People who are building a website will always come to a point where he or she needs to get a web hosting service to host the website. Confusions strike in when they find out there are different type of hosting including shared hosting, dedicated hosting and reseller hosting. People confuse wondering which type of hosting should they go with. This article will tell you more about shared hosting and its specialty in order to give you a better idea in your decision making.

For your information, shared hosting like what the name speaks is shared among subscribers. For example when 2 people sign up for a shared hosting, they will host in the same physical server sharing the same IP address however their accounts are separated using software. Each of them will not be able to access the other account. So it looks like the account is independent. The service providers have kind of partitioned the storage space into 2 slots for 2 different accounts. Same theory applies when the same server has 1,000 subscribers.

You will wonder how the computer identify the correct website when internet users want to access the website hosted in shared hosting since there is only 1 IP address. When a user requests a website by typing the web address in to browser, it will send the request to the server through IP address and the catch is hostname of the website will be sent together as part of the request too. Therefore with IP address and the hostname the browser can determine which website you want to access. Shared hosting definitely has its strength and weakness.

Strength

In term of strength, shared hosting has very strong stand in pricing. As many people are sharing the same physical server the cost has been distributed evenly. The monthly subscription fee can be as low as $4.95/month and this price is easily available everywhere. This definitely fulfills the cost effectiveness of a website. Although shared hosting is cheaper than other type of hosting that does not mean it has low quality. Instead it is an ideal hosting for many webmasters. They build websites on shared hosting to run their business. Of cause the quality still rely on the proper management of hosting providers. As discussed in most of the articles, the reputation of a hosting provider is very important in this case. Thus I always go with big hosting companies like Hostgator, Lunarpages and Bluehost. Their organized management is powerful enough to maintain the quality of their shared hosting.

Weaknesses

In term of weaknesses, users share the server among themselves. Sharing is still sharing. When there is irresponsible user in the sharing group, the way the fellow uses the hosting will jeopardize other accounts too. For example if a website that has very big traffic volume is hosted, the access of other website in the same server might be affected because that particular website has drawn most of the resources of the server. Although you do not know which website or account that is causing the problem, the negative effect is still visible. Therefore in this case a good hosting company will kick in and warn the users on the usage. Shared hosting has no dedicated IP for your website too. Therefore if the Domain Name Server is down (your domain name is not functional due to whatever reasons) you will not be able to access your website using just IP address like http://127.0.0.1 because the server will confused not knowing which website to show up. Also it is not possible to have dedicated SSL to your website because SSL works on IP. Since your IP is shared, the same SSL scripting will be shared among other subscribers too. However SSL sharing does not mean it will degrade the security of SSL but instead you have less control on the script.

Despite the weaknesses of shared hosting, it remains the most common hosting among webmasters. I believe this is mostly because the economic price of shared hosting. It makes web hosting affordable and is able to host decent websites. In fact shared hosting has not much difference from a dedicated hosting (dedicated hosting uses dedicated server to host your website with dedicated IP) except for the dedicated IP, dedicated server and an expensive price (could be $100+/month). So in order to host a website or a blog or even a business website, if you are not targeting a website as big as Wikipedia or YouTube, shared hosting is recommended. But of cause not all shared hosting are the same. You should at all time look for shared hosting provided by quality hosting providers like Hostgator.

To continue it is recommended to take a look at the Hostgator hosting review.

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

The 3 Must-Do Things to Identify Quality Web Hosting

2008-11-07T13:17:00.001-08:00

By Daren Albom

In fact there are too many web hosting providers in the market nowadays causing too many hosting offers floating around. When there are too many choices, a dilemma happens where potential subscribers do not know which hosting service to go with. Rest assured that if you follow the steps below and you will find out whether a hosting company is good or not.

Infrastructure

First of all you need to do some research on the background of the company. You should try understanding more on their hosting infrastructure. Whether a company has their own data centers or not is important as that reflects the budget and capability of the company. Resellers who sell hosting services do not really have any control on the hosting and therefore it will sometimes be a mess when problems occur.

After knowing that they have a data center, check the location and specifications of it. The specifications will be the things you are paying for. For example Lunarpages data centers are located in AIS, one of the best equipped buildings in the world, definitely fit our needs.

Customer Support

Secondly you should pay attention to their customer support. Check what kind of support the hosting companies are supporting. For usual case the web hosting providers are offering email support, ticket submission, live chat, telephone support and forum. You should make sure the support medium is something you find it comfortable to use assuming you will be contacting them once every month (worst case scenario).

You are encouraged to contact them to ask a few questions. You could find out more on their hosting features as well as their quality of the customer support. Pay attention to their response time and efficiency. Some hosting companies definitely know their stuff and answer your questions straight while some do not. You are of cause looking for a customer support who can solve your problems at the soonest time are not you?

Reputation of Company

The third thing to do is to check the reputation of a company where you can get information on hosting review website. Read customer feedback on the hosting and see what they say. But one thing for sure that it is impossible to find a web hosting company that has no negative feedback because it is impossible to please everyone when come to servicing industry like web hosting. You should learn to filter which feedback to take and which not to.

Hostgator to me apparently has good reputation because their CEO is very dedicated in his business that he actually attends to customer complaints personally upon request. This is really a confidence boosted up to see such an efficient support.

I believe with these 3 to-do things you are able to identify a quality web hosting company with hands down. Bear in mind that a quality web hosting providers should always work with you but not work against you. After all that is the reason why you pay them for.

Daren is a writer and webmaster. His Hostgator 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 here.

Bluehost Hosting Review

2008-11-07T13:16:00.000-08:00

By Daren Albom

Bluehost is a well recognized web hosting company that provides hosting solutions to business and individual. In cooperated since 1996, they are the oldest web hosting companies you can possibly find. However, being the oldest does not mean they will automatically become a quality hosting. I have reviewed Bluehost based on the following criterion.

Reputation

A company reputation is important when come to servicing industry like web hosting. A company with good reputation reflects how sincere and honest of them in running the business. And for established for than 10 years, Bluehost has apparently built up a good reputation. This can easily be seen by Googling their hosting review.

Hosting Features

Bluehost is very unique in their hosting plan because they have only one hosting plan. They use one plan fits all strategy. Whether you are a business owner or hobbyist blogger you host in just one plan. In their plan, they offer unlimited storage and bandwidth. Also subscribers are allowed to host unlimited domains in just 1 account. Well the hosting feature is pretty good because by that you can host as many website as you wish in just 1 account unlike some other hosting companies which only allow 1 domain per hosting account. Also they allow 100 MySQL databases, 2,500 POP3 email accounts and 1,000 FTP accounts.

For your information, Bluehost web hosting supports PHP5, Perl5, Python, Ruby, custom PHP.INI files, MySQL, PostgreSQL flash abd etc,

Scripts and Library

In term of website scripts, they have have rather comprehensive scripts. One of the highlight is the free drag and drop site builder. With this scripting you can easily build a website. You can access this features under software and services in Bluehost cpanel. It is named Page Wizard Site Builder. What you need to do is to select a template and customize it with your products and information. Also Fantastico is enabled that there are tons of scripts and software inside including blogging software, forum software, e commerce features and etc. E commerce features like shopping carts is something necessary if you are building an internet store. You can access all of these in their free hosting demo available in their website. Just goto their home page and then features page and you will see the hosting demo at the top right of the page.

Performance

Web hosting is a technology service which dependent on hundred of other things like internet connections, power supply, data center HVAC, human monitoring and etc. Therefore it will not be possible to get 100% uptime because failures do happen. What is important is how often failures happen and how soon everything can get back in normal after failure. 99.5% is what Bluehost has achieved so far in this year. 99.5% means they are only down for 0.5% of the time along the years. This is quite an impressive results and I consider Bluehost is very reliable.

Customer support

Customer support is an important factor for a web hosting company. This is because once the subscribers noticed any problems they will contact the support at the first place and ask for help. If the support cannot respond to such request on time, it will definitely cause loses to the subscribers. Bluehost's support consists of ticket submissions, telephone support, email support, live chat and FAQ sessions. It is rather comprehensive but what is more important is the response time from the support. The support in Bluehost has a good response time. If you would like to experience yourself you can always talk to their live chat checking their response time in solving your question.

After these 5 features, it is not difficult to conclude that Bluehost is a quality web hosting. It is not only their experiences in web hosting matter but also their quality services. Although they offer only one hosting plan but the plan is rather comprehensive with good features and scripting that you can easily build something decent online.

To read more do continue to Bluehost review.

Daren is a writer and webmaster. His Bluehost hosting review website provides a better insight on the web hosting leader.

Web Hosting - All You Ever Wanted to Know About a Webspace Provider!

2008-11-03T13:14:00.002-08:00

By Smit Mathur

A Web host is your pivotal associate when you venture into launching your entity online and endeavor to attain a web presence. The mystery that web hosting is to many is justifiably so, because there are many aspects to it that one must know. To begin with, a webspace provider offers different types of services, including:

•Free web hosting

•Virtual Dedicated hosting

•Dedicated hosting

•Shared hosting

•Reseller web hosting

•Collocation web hosting

•Managed hosting

•Clustered hosting

•Grid hosting

Many a webspace providers also offer specific services along with general ones. Some amongst them are image hosting service, blog-hosting service, one-click hosting and shopping cart software.

In this context, we should highlight on hosting uptime as well. Generally, hosting is referred as the percentage of time that the host is running through the Ethernet port. To maintain the online presence of any e-company, it is very important for the site to remain up and run at least 99% or more than that. So, it is better to opt for a webspace provider who is giving guarantee of optimum uptime.

When it comes to web host services, disc space also matters a lot. The main function of disc space is to store files, images, web pages and other digital media. Minimum of 50 MB disc space is necessary for a website.

Every website receives many visitors per day. Therefore, it is required for a site to have proper bandwidth to handle the traffic. Bandwidth is the amount of data and it is only bandwidth, which helps browsers to visit and access a site. So, while taking the web host service, one must give accent on bandwidth. Remember, it should be a minimum of 4GB, although you can also avail much more that from your webspace provider.

With the continuous advancement of web technologies, web hosting services are coming with new features every day. Some space providers also assist to handle various programming languages, including CGI, PHP, Perl and many others. Even more, a lot of service providers assist users to create their own email addresses too.

Finding a service provider is not a tough job nowadays and needless to say that the Internet is a good medium for it. You will get here various options to choose a reliable service provider. But, do not forget to check the aforesaid facts with your webspace provider. In addition, go for a service provider, providing authentic customer support facility as well.

Smit Mathur is an expert for writing Articles and is currently working for Aussie webhost. For more information related to web host services, Affordable web hosting, Business web hosting, Web hosting provider, Ecommerce web hosting please visit http://www.aussiewebhost.com.au/.

A Review of the Host4Profit Website Hosting Service

2008-11-03T13:14:00.001-08:00

By Brian Garvin

After looking over the Host4Profit website, we feel this is the all-in-one package. Why? Well, we'll explain more below, but if you've been looking for a hosting service, products to sell, and an affiliate program you can market, we'd have to tell you this is it. Seriously, why try to find each thing on different sites when it's all right here for the taking?

What It's About

Host4Profit delivers 800MB in their business hosting package. While this is only the beginning, it allows you to have a substantial amount of space for your website. Just like their website will tell you, eventually everyone will have some sort of domain name. It may be http://www.yourname.com or something catchy for your business to prosper. Whatever the reason is, you'll find it to be a great market to be involved with online.

The Plug-In Sites

Since we come across people everyday who have no idea what to market online, their website takes the guessing out of the equation. There are four different ones you can be a part of, which all include high commission rates for each sale. In fact, three out of the four allow you to keep 100% of the profits. Still wondering about the other one? Well, while it's not quite a hundred percent it's pretty close to it.

Making Money With Them

As an affiliate for their website, you can literally pay for your personal monthly costs over and over again. How do we know? The goal for you is to refer three people to the site and then your monthly fee will be covered. Hey, if you want to refer more, it's only going to make you more money in the long run, but we were just thinking small potatoes here.

One of the easiest scenarios to comprehend is reading the information on their website. For every person you refer, you'll receive ten dollars. Simple math will tell you that if you refer 50 people overall, then you can expect an extra $500 per month. Now, understand this isn't a one time deal. Every month that the people you refer stay hosted with the Host4Profit business, you'll continue to receive $10 on each account.

So if you have 1,000 people lined up, then $10,000 a month is very attainable. Don't think you can do it? While some people will struggle since they aren't accustomed to the Internet, others will prosper from their autoresponder lists with ease. So we know some of you can become very wealthy in a shorter amount of time.

Our Overall Analysis

This is probably one of the most unique opportunities on the Internet. It provides you with a business that everyone is going to need in the near future, plus enable you to build your own personal business at the same time. We were going to tell you all the features associated with their hosting plan, but there is just too much to place here. So when you're ready, just click the link below and see if this is the avenue you want to take on the Internet.

Let Website Hosting Review Kings Brian Garvin and Jeff West teach you more about Internet Marketing Review Kings. Feel free to use this article but please leave all links and author bio intact.

Web Hosting Services Ideas

2008-11-02T11:22:00.003-08:00

By Tem Balanco

It is often said that Archimedes was sitting in a bath tub when he discovered the famous Archimedes principle. Similarly, great business ideas suddenly arise in the brains of great entrepreneurs in 'eureka' moments. This is exactly how an Internet entrepreneur came up with the idea of selling web hosting services. His idea clicked and the business prospered in no time. Unlike other new businesses, demand for web hosting did not reach saturation even after the advent of hundreds of players.

So it became natural for people to seek out information about businesses by first going to the web site for the business. It would be foolish for a modern business to try to fight the competition without using every tool available to advertise and connect with customers. This is why the demand for web hosting services will continue to increase. The internet is just as important for the conduct of business as the telephone and will remain in demand indefinitely.

Since that won't happen any time soon, the vendors who rent server space for the purpose of hosting websites will get to stay in business. In other words, the supply side of this equation will also stay powerful. Thus, the forces of supply and demand in the business of web hosting can be expected to equal each other all the time. This is what makes it such a stable and non-cyclical business.

If your goal is to enter this line of work, you need to devote a significant amount of time to learning customer support and the intricacies of this business. The impending profits are much great than the capital requirement. However, outstanding concentration on total customer relationship management is needed in web hosting services.

Price differentiation methods work very well in the web hosting services business, since nobody wishes to spend thousands on hosting. However, you support price differentiation methods by leveraging smart advertising, online and offline, of your site hosting services. Doing so will guarantee profits all the time.

It is quite simple to understand the reason why there is a prolonged demand-supply equilibrium in the web hosting industry. The reason is that with the creation of e-commerce, all businesses with websites uploaded their sites to third party servers of companies offering web hosting services. So it became natural for people to seek out information about businesses by first going to the web site for the business. If your goal is to enter this line of work, you need to devote a significant amount of time to learning customer support and the intricacies of this business. The impending profits are much great than the capital requirement.

Web Hosting Plans - How to Choose the Right One

2008-11-02T11:22:00.001-08:00

By Tem Balanco

What activities will you need to do so you can design and begin a site from scratch? You will need to create the home page, pick interactivities, select color codes for every web page and interactivity, pick a theme which binds all the web pages, estimate data storage and evaluate web hosting plans, and then figure out a strategy to advertise the site and make it popular. A simple way to prioritize such activities and parcel out your efforts per the set priorities is to place them on a project plan in a pyramid.

Activities such as comparing web hosting plans must be at the top of your pyramid of project plans. The basic theory is simple, because no web site can exist unless you have found a web hosting service that is suitable, and will fit your needs. The higher the number of dependencies your activity has, the higher it should be on your project plan pyramid.

Although established service providers give reliable web hosting services with a minimum downtime, new entrants into such a business give web hosting plans at giveaway prices. The choice between the two categories of web hosting plans must closely match the reason for you creating the site.

Professional websites may get vast numbers of visitors daily and therefore need far more space than is normally offered by the smaller web hosting firms. On the other hand, if you are an entrepreneur but your pages have not been designed for sales but rather to increase people's awareness of your company's presence on the internet, you might prefer to spend as little as possible for web hosting.

Some small islands in the pacific provide free domain names as well as web hosting plans. Yes, their free services are available for commercial web sites in addition to amateur web sites. Are you wondering why do these island nations provide free web hosting?

Simply put, these countries are so tiny that lots of people don't recognize them. In order to increase their prominence, they began to release web domains for free, and to offer free web hosting. With these two strategies, these tiny island countries began to attract important web traffic, and to become more visible on the world stage.

To design and start a web site from scratch, you do need to design the home page, choose the color codes for each web page, select a theme that binds all web pages, estimate the data storage and judge web hosting plans, and formulate a strategy to advertise and popularize your website. Older well known service providers can host your website with a maximum of uptime and reliability, but don't overlook the newer providers in this field who can offer hosting plans at a much cheaper rate. Some small islands in the pacific provide free domain names as well as hosting plans.

Reseller Hosting Servers and Reseller Hosting is a Profitable Business

2008-11-02T11:21:00.004-08:00

By Tem Balanco

Reseller reseller hosting is actually when you buy a reseller web site plan and then further sell it to the end user. Generally it is the smaller companies that buy these plans and after separating them into more individual plans they start selling it to users and others who need these services. What it actually involves is the deal of one dedicated server which is further used to give reseller hosting services to many clients. This enables these companies to generate handsome profits out of it.

Many companies dabble in the field of IT business. IT business has proven effective in creating a great increase in income and business. The flat cost is minimized too and while web plans one doesn't have to invest on the servers. It's more comparable to being the middle man and creating a way to earn with a minimum of your personal investment.

You can understand the process more clearly if you know something about the size of reseller hosting room that is generally purchased. You can buy 500 megabytes of space and then divide it into 5 equal accounts which you can sell to 5 different clients. Typically, this will be profitable, since you will get more for these individual packages combined than you paid for your single account.

It would not be a surprising to know that even the big companies do the same. They are more likely to rent server space from even bigger service providers and then after dividing the space and bandwidth into further parts they sell it to individuals and commercial clients. This all process of reselling web services sounds easy but involves lots of technicalities.

First is the decision one must make when picking the company to buy services from. It's vital to do complete analyses before you make that final decision. Your selection must fulfill your needs and give you quality services which you plan to distribute and sell further. To keep it brief, strong effort and good planning must be carried out to pick a reseller hosting company.

The process of setting up reseller reseller hosting is time taking and needs vast knowledge of accommodation of bandwidth and space as per ones requirement. A well managed setup always produces great results as one can earn income that even initial service providers do not earn. The trend has proved to be successful and a large community of investors wants to invest in this sector of business.

Reseller hosting is simply purchasing a reseller web site plan then proceeding to resell it to end users. Normally the little companies purchase these plans after purchasing them they then divide them into separate plans, then these businesses begin to sell them to users as well as others who need the service. It usually involves a deal from a committed server which is moving forward to give services to a lot of clients to gain good profit from it. A number of companies are involved in this line of business. Its success has created many investors who want to put capital into this sector.

Dedicated Web Server

2008-11-02T11:21:00.003-08:00

By Santosh Bhangle

When you are building a website on the Internet, the most important thing is to decide which web host server to choose for hosting your website. There are various types of web servers, for example, virtual web hosting server, shared web hosting server, and dedicated server are the top three popular hosting services.

The problems with the virtual web hosting server and the shared web hosting server are that you may not have full control over the web server which hosts your website. Further, there may be stability and reliability problems of the web server.

You may also face many problems about the bandwidth, the disk space, installation of the scripts and the web applications, etc. If your bandwidth faces problems, then it will take a long time for the web page to be downloaded which may upset your website visitors. They will leave the site and probably will never come back.

A dedicated web hosting service is the best service which you should choose if you have a good online business that is growing rapidly, and expecting a lot of web traffic. You will have the total control over the dedicated web server. When you face some kind of difficulties with dedicated web servers, you can contact your web host and ask them to resolve the issues, or you may hire your own technical support staff. Usually the web hosting will require additional fees if you need their support service too.

As you are the only user on the entire dedicated web server, you will not have any problems regarding the bandwidth, the disk space, the memory allocation, or any other system-related errors. However, dedicated web hosting service can be quite costly at times, as it requires maintenance and re-purchase of the actual hardware, the operating system, the related softwares, and other necessary tools.

When you are choosing the dedicated web server, you need to know that they are of two types. They are the managed web hosting server and the unmanaged web hosting server.

In the unmanaged web hosting server, you are provided the hardware, operating system, and the internet connection by the web host. The rest of the jobs, for example, installing the various web applications and maintaining the web server are considered to be your duties.

In case of managed web hosting server, your web host provides you all the necessary tools and its maintenance, and you just have to concentrate on designing and developing your website. Although managed servers are more costlier, they can make your website more professional.

However, you need to be more careful while choosing the managed web hosting server. You should check the price of the disk space that you may need if your website expands. You also need to check the disk space and the bandwidth that you are getting, and how much it will cost if you exceed the limits provided for them at some point of time.

Dedicated web hosting server also allows you to install dot-com files and the dot-dll (dynamic link library) files required for your website. Another advantage of having the dedicated web service is that if you feel that the web space that you own is getting wasted, then you can resell some amount of disk space available on your dedicated web server. This way you can even make profits using the spare disk space.

While handling the dedicated web hosting server, you need to be extra careful about the customer support and the reliability that is provided to your online readers and clients. If your web server goes off the net, you will not only stop making money, but also loose your web visitors.

The dedicated web hosting server is an extremely powerful web tool and with the right knowledge, you can really turn your website into one of the more powerful websites on the internet.

I cordially invite you to the read in-depth expert information (with easy to understand graphics) about Dedicated Web Hosting, SEO topics, Tips & Tricks, and other information that will definitely help you in your web hosting requirements, internet marketing, SEO, targeted web traffic, link popularity, SEO, and affiliate marketing related efforts.

Please feel free to republish this article provided a working hyper-link remains to our site.

Where to Find Affordable Web Hosting

2008-11-02T11:21:00.001-08:00

By Nicholas Halmond

The most cost effective way of web hosting is shared web hosting. Shared Web hosting is usually sufficient for most small and medium sized businesses. It is actually the most popular type of web hosting service. Shared web hosting allows more than one site to be hosted on the same server. Shared web hosting is the technology of hosting multiple websites on a single server, separated logically from each other, but physically on the same machine. By sharing a single high-powered server's resources, administrative costs are shared across multiple websites and each customer pays a much smaller fee compared to owning and managing a dedicated servers.

If you are willing to sign up for a longer term contract (6, 12, or 24 months) the prices will usually be lower than paying at the end of each month. Most companies offer a number of plans to suite there customers needs.when looking for a affordable hosting service you want to look for reliability 99.5% uptime or better, support,security and speed. Also one of the most important things to look for are there features. like the amount of web space you can have, amount of bandwidth, webmail accounts, the number of domains that you can host, if they offer a site builder,a full feature control panel,software features (etc).

We have perform a lot of research to to get a better understand on which hosting companies are the best on the market. And I tell you what there are a lot of shady companies out there. So take your time in choosing the right service. Your website or business might depend on it.

Affordable Web Hosting Terms

2008-11-02T11:20:00.006-08:00

By Nicholas Halmond

affordable Web hosting involves a lot of concepts and words you may not be familiar with. So we will start off with a few definitions to give you a better understanding on what to look for while searching for a hosting provider

Data transfer In Web hosting, the total size of files transferred by an account in a month. Sites with a lots of graphics, downloads, or streaming audio or video and a lot of visitors will require plans with more available transfer.

Bandwidth Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time. On the Net, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or in higher units like Mbps (millions of bits per second). 28.8 modem can deliver 28,800 bps, a T1 line is about 1.5 Mbps.

Domain name Domain name is an easy-to-remember address that can be translated by DNS into server's IP address. Domain names are hierarchical. Domain's suffix indicates which TLD (top level domain) it belongs to, for example .com, .gov, .org, .net, or .jp. Recently ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) added several new TLDs, like .biz, .pro., and .museum.

Control Panel Control panel included in web hosting packages is an online web-based application that allows you to easily manage different aspects of your account. Most control panels will let you upload files, add email accounts, change contact information, set up shopping carts or databases, view usage statistics, etc.

These are the main feature you Probably will first what to focus on before making a dicision on your web service. Of course there is alot more involved than that, we have a full list of hosting term on our website that may help you. plus we offer you great reviews, a detailed compare chart, testimonials, and the top promotional offers from the best affordable web hosting companies on the market today.

3 Pitfalls of Shared Hosting - Shared Web Hosting

2008-11-02T11:20:00.005-08:00

By Mark Bellinger

What Should You Watch Out For With Shared Hosting?

The most popular & cheapest form of web hosting is shared hosting not least of all because of it's low cost.

However shared hosting does come with its fair share of perils.

Shared hosting means that your website will be hosted on the web host's server that is also home to many other websites.

So, if each site or account on the server has its own allocated amount of web space & bandwidth how can it be bad, you may ask?

Well below are some of the Pitfalls of Shared Hosting.

3 Pitfalls of Shared Hosting

Some hosts will overload their servers with too many sites which impacts negatively on the performance of your site caused by increased competition for the server resources by all the sites on the server.

This will slow your site down & could even cause a server to crash - disaster!

Shared hosting accounts also have restrictions placed on them limitations placed on them with regard to the amount of disk space, data transfers, email addresses and domains that they can have.

There are also often restrictions related to running scripts and databases that use quite a bit of CPU (processing power).

This type of server activity causes reduced performance for all sites on the server which is beyond your control.

Stability and Security of the server & consequently your website.

A poorly managed server which hosts one or two exceptionally busy sites could exhaust the server's resources and cause downtime for all sites hosted on the server.

The same is true if one site on the server is subject to a DOS attack which can impact all sites on the server.

Therefore any site on a shared server that is compromised, that security breach can pose a serious risk to all of the sites on that server.

Whilst the above scenarios are enough to put anyone off opting for a shared hosting account it's not all doom and gloom.

Most of the above only occur on poorly managed servers where the hosting companies are short sighted & put profitability above service & customer loyalty.

It is therefore quite possible to secure a cheap hosting option on a shared seller with a reputable & well managed hosting company.

Get reliable, secure & Low Cost Hosting options here »

Mark Bellinger, a university graduate, is a successful businessman and entrepreneur exploring legitimate and lucrative internet opportunities

Why Go For Cheap Web Hosting

2008-11-02T11:20:00.003-08:00

By Justin Knights

In the internet world today, the competition is rising as well as the demand. Some would use more money to host a website but some is just tight on the budget. So, web hosting options are turned to cheap web hosting. Although cheap, it doesn't mean that they are not good. They might just be enough for some webmasters out there.

A cheap web hosting will usually provide you a storage space of 100MB. With this kind amount of space, you could actually have enough freedom to place banners on your website. That will do good to make your website interesting. As for email accounts, you will usually get up to 19 email account registered under that particular host. Next, the bandwidth, a cheap hosting will give you a considerably 1GB bandwidth. This is acceptable and they even provide ready made templates for you to choose from to build your website.

As for the negative side of things, cheap hosting means that you are not likely to have you own domain and you will be placed in a sub-domain. If you are using a free web hosting service, you won't even get an email function. This will prove to be a major factor to show your qualities and if you are running an online business, not having your own email with your own domain will show lack of professionalism. Furthermore, you do not have access to database which means that you will not be able to upload files whenever you like.

Therefore, cheap hosting is one of many ways for you to get a website on to the internet. However, you have to consider the purpose of your website and how it will let the people who go to your website feel. If it is for business purposes, you must be convincing so that people will be comfortable with your service. Even though you have to spend more in the beginning, with great care and work done to your website, you will get your return in time.

Wish to read more website hosting reviews? Check out WebHostingSecretRevealed.com - a place where the webmaster (Jerry) examine various hosting services by hosting websites on the web hosts first hand. Personally, I recommend his writings on Bluehost review - read on, it's among the very few reviews that share honest opinions on Bluehost hosting.

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.

Web Hosting For Forums

2008-11-02T11:20:00.001-08:00

By Justin Knights

In the internet today, there are more and more content being shared and viewed everyday. A popular platform to do so is an online forum. Forum discussions are getting popular with the ever growing online community that shares and exchange views and opinion in the internet. Like any other website, a forum need o be on the internet to viewed and it need a web hosting to achieve that purpose. How can a forum be good? The answer simply lies in the hands of the web hosting company. A web hosting provider plays a vital role in the success of an online forum.

Firstly, a big amount of space is needed for the forum. Bandwidth is also an important key because you need it to support the huge amount of traffic that will hit your forum. The next thing to look out for is the server uptime. Most company out there provides 99%. Uptime is also important so that people can always log into your forum.

Furthermore, a good forum will need a good database system to manage the huge amount of data. MySQL, DBS and phpAdmin is important to ensure good data management. One more thing to look out for is the security support that the hosting provider provides. This is important so that your forum is free from hackers or virus and all your information safe. To have your forum performing consistently, you will need a good service support from the provider company so that any issues that you might face can be solved in the shortest time possible.

Therefore, before you start a forum of your own, go and search for a provider that can provide you with all the aspects that we have discussed here. Do so and you forum will perform well. So, do a fine research of all the companies of your choice and make a smart decision. After that, enjoy all the stuff that is going to happen in your forum.

Need more readings on web hosting review? Check out WebHostingSecretRevealed.com - a place where the webmaster (Jerry) examine various hosting services by hosting websites on the web hosts first hand. Personally, I recommend his writings on Hostgator review - read on, it's among the very few reviews that share honest opinions on Hostgator.

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.

Things to Look For in a Web Hosting

2008-11-02T11:19:00.006-08:00

By Justin Knights

The providers for web hosting are constantly on the rise in the market. There seems to be more and more choices to choose from with different companies providing different features and price. To make a good choice out of your investment, you need to do a detailed research in order to know what you are paying for. Here are a few features that you should look into when comparing companies.

Firstly, compare the disk storage. You need storage to store your files for your website. Therefore, disk storage is very important. The bigger the disk storage, the more you can show on your website. You know ask the company whether they include email and log in the disk storage counted for your package. This is to let you have an idea on how much storage you have in they do so. Then you can estimate a 20%-30% extra disk space that you will need for your website needs.

After that, you need to have a FTP access for your website. This is vital for you to manage the maintenance of you website. Don't ever choose a host that has limitations on the FTP access. The best is to go for unlimited FTP access when you scout for web hosting companies. With unlimited access, you can fully make use of you hosting account to benefit in your business.

Next up is the bandwidth provided by the web hosting company. Bandwidth is very important to keep your website running smoothly in the internet. It plays a part in determining your websites reaction, respond, download which will affect the experience of visitors that comes to your website. With poor bandwidth, surfers will find visiting your website frustrating because the response is slow and downloading file from your website takes too much time.

After figuring the issues above, you should now figure out the resource of the provider. We are talking about the usage of server, CPU, RAM and the database connection. Most importantly, the provider must be able to have sufficient resources. A test of the uptime of the company should also be done by using a third party software. No website provider will be good if they have insufficient resources.

Lastly, the one last thing to compare is the price. Some people are willing to pay more and some are willing to pay less. Therefore, research is important so that you know how much they company charge based on the service that they provide. Make comparison and you can get a good idea which is more economical and effective. Be aware to enquire and find out if there is any hidden charges in the package or you will end up surprised when you see you bill.

Need more readings on web hosting review? Check out WebHostingSecretRevealed.com - a place where the webmaster (Jerry) examine various hosting services by hosting websites on the web hosts first hand. Personally, I recommend his writings on Hostgator hosting - read on, it's among the very few reviews that share honest opinions on Hostgator.

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.

The Impact of Hosting Bandwidth on Your Website

2008-11-02T11:19:00.005-08:00

By Justin Knights

There are many things or features that will affect the performance of a website. To discuss in detail, we will discuss about one feature which is one of the major feature that keep the website running smooth, the bandwidth. Bandwidth is simply the amount of data transferable through your website.

As you have guessed, the mount of data transferred is referred as traffic in web hosting. Traffic refers to the amount of visitors that comes to your website or the amount of hits you receive in your website. Every time a visitor hits on your website, they download a certain amount of information and that is what is being calculated as traffic.

Therefore, if your website is based more on text, the files in size is lesser and you will be able to receive more traffic compared to a website which is filled with photos or images which takes up more space with bigger files. The more graphics you have in your website, the bigger the traffic is for your website.

So, whether or not the traffic has an effect on the performance of your website will depend on the web hosting provider. Every package provided has a certain amount of bandwidth entitled to that particular website. The amount of bandwidth needed will depend on the design of the website. Hosting companies usually gives you a choice of how much bandwidth you want, it may be 1GB or some other amount. 1GB equals 1000MB and with that amount of bandwidth, you could have an idea what type of website will work fine.

Try to predict the amount of bandwidth you will nee and add a little more to your prediction just to be safe. If you are building a new website for the first time, you could go here visit: http://www.learnthat.com/courses/computer/windows/filesize1.shtml to have estimation on how much of bandwidth you need. To be safe, start with a basic web hosting package and upgrade as time goes by.

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.

Limitations of Shared Hosting

2008-11-02T11:19:00.003-08:00

By Justin Knights

Dedicated web hosting the kind of website where everyone or business would like to have eventually because you owned the entire server. However, the cost is very high and that is why we choose shared web hosting simply because it is more affordable. Although it is the most sought after web hosting, it doesn't mean that is the ultimate best in every aspect. Same as shared web hosting, dedicated hosting too have some setbacks. The point is, even though a shared hosting is cheaper, it will also work for you.

Not all shared hosting is bad, you just have to be smart and choose the proper hosting service available out there. If you get the right hosting company, your website will perform as if it was hosted by a dedicated hosting.

For a shared web hosting, the most asked issue is the reliability. There is more than one website hosted in the server. There might be possibilities of buggy scripts which may disturb the server and also the problem of overloading visitors which may be more than what your website could support. Therefore, careful planning is very important.

The second issue we have to pay attention in a shared web hosting is the billing system. There are many upgrades involved in shared hosting and we could sometimes be giving away money for nothing. Therefore, we must find a host which is honest and transparent in their billing system so that we know what we are paying for.

The nest thing to look out in a shared hosting is the capability of the hosting company. Some company is unable to provide with the hosting features that they stated. Therefore, try to stay aware from companies that allow one up to five add-ons for your domain name. Reputable companies are more suitable so that you will be sure to get the kind of feature that they promised.

Another thing to look out for in a shared hosting company is their technical support. Because the server is shared, there is a higher probability that your website will suffer errors or problems. Therefore, you need a good technical support to help you fix the problem so that your website could be up and running again in the shortest time possible.

No matter which type of web hosting you eventually end up with, research and study is very important to know what you are paying for. Look for more source of information regarding the hosting company that you are interested in to get more information and solid information to know what the company is really all about. If you do that research, there is a strong chance that you will end up choosing the right hosting company.

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.

Learning ASP Hosting

2008-11-02T11:19:00.001-08:00

By Justin Knights

ASP Hosting refers to Active Server Page web hosting. It is an additional support which some web hosting company provides. It is very suitable for website that is data-driven. Inserting ASP code with your website's HTML pages will give you that dynamic feel. With this ASP, your website can change following the actions of the user. This is possible because the ASP code provides a link between you web pages and the database. With this feature, users can interact with your web page by choosing a unique preference or setting based on their likeness.

The ASP works just the same for any HTML page. Normally, a user will type and URL

to visit a certain page. The URL requested will look for the file in the web server and once it is found, it will display the web page on the screen. If is a standard HTML page, what the user see will be exactly the same as what the web page look like in the web server. However, if that page is embedded with the ASP script, it will first run the HTML code and then the ASP code.

Finding a web hosting that provides this ASP is simple. You need to find a web host that runs on a Windows 2000 server. This is because Windows 2000 server provides more reliability and is safer for ASP pages as they are components that work with Internet Information Service (IIS). Besides that, you must also find a web host that provide the suitable database that works well for your website

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.

Knowing the Basics of Web Hosting

2008-11-02T11:18:00.005-08:00

By Justin Knights

To have your own website available on the internet, you need a place to store your files. To do so, you need a host and this is done by a computer which is known as the web server. It will be the location where all the files related to your website is placed. These web servers will need to have internet connection to sort of broadcast your website to the internet. This whole package of things required to have your website is called the web hosting.

With the constant growth in the internet demand, we hosting has emerge to become one of the hottest industry caused by the increasing demand. Today, web hosting companies has gone through a long way from hosting dull websites to flashy and hi-tech websites with much function. They are also providing all sorts of packages to choose from with an affordable price. Having a website is no longer a thing for the big companies but it is now a level playing ground for many businesses out there. With fast internet connection today, bandwidth and storage space prices has gone lower than before.

There is different web hosting for different purposes. For business, the most common web hosting is either dedicated web hosting or shared web hosting. A dedicated web hosting means that the entire server serves only one website. On the other hand, shared web hosting serves multiple websites in one server. Shared hosting is currently being used by any companies because of the lower cost. Dedicated hosting is used by larger companies with more money.

Which one is suitable for you? You have to choose a web hosting company based on many things. There are things such as the price, reputation, features, quality of support and many more to consider before you make your choice. Always beware of the scam out there which offers you unbelievable package that even you would be skeptic about. Be sure to read through all the reports you can find regarding the company before you make your choice.

A good web hosting company is essential for the success of your online business. Never fall for fancy stuff as the basic are always more important. Know what you are spending on and choose wisely according to the need of you business.

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.

Web Hosting Options

2008-11-02T11:18:00.003-08:00

By David Butler

Canadian web hosting is becoming more and more popular among webmasters due to the wider range of features, and lower prices of web hosting companies. There are many Canadian web hosting companies; however, the three best ones are: IPower, BlueHost, and StartLogic. These companies all have great customer service, support, and lots of storage. They also come with many email accounts. They have some very reasonable prices for the features that they offer. They also have a very reliable service which is good news for anybody looking to make money with their web site. If the site goes off line, then you wont be making any money.

If you are looking for Canadian web hosting, then make sure that you research different companies. You may be surprised to see all the good deals that many companies offer for service. If you already have web hosting, but you aren't happy with the service, then you may be interested Canadian web hosting. You can compare your company to some of the Canadian companies, ad see which one offers the best deal. Make sure to make a list of all the features that you want in advance, along with a list of all the features that you don't need. Having this list handy will aid you in your search for finding the best hosting company.

Overall, if you follow this advice on how to find a good company for your website, you will be that much closer to building a profitable business online.

David Butler, the author of this article, is a Christian businessman, and has several web hosting sites, Affordable Web Hosting 4U and HostGator Reviews.

Who Else Wants Hostgator Web Hosting Honest Review?

2008-11-02T11:18:00.001-08:00

By Daren Albom

Hostgator sell web hosting service and for being established for years, they are one of the leaders in the hosting industry. With 5000 available servers, the hosting services they provide fit all purposes including blogging, business, data backup, email server and etc. Hostgator has recently gone green that they have now power up all their servers with renewable energy. They have bought as much as 130% of their demand power from wind power.

Hostgator features

Speaking about their hosting features, Hostgator Baby plan provides unlimited disk space and bandwidth to the subscribers. Also unlimited add on domains are allowed. The plan also comes with unlimited MySQL Databases, unlimited POP3 email accounts and etc.

The hosting supports CGI, PHP5, SSH, Pearl, Python, SSI, streaming audio and video and many more. To summarize the features, Hostgator is providing a pretty standard package to the subscribers. Standard here means standard among those huge hosting companies. You get all the necessary features. In fact what is helpful to us the webmaster is the scripting library. Scripts like blog software, Fantatisco, shopping cart and etc help in building a quality yet easy to maintain website.

Hostgator Performance

Hostgator is the first web hosting company that I have ever come across that guarantee the server uptime. They guarantee subscribers to have 99.9% of uptime. If they fail to comply with this, they will compensate subscribers in a certain way. However I cannot find any further compensations details on their website nor the internet.

This is because Hostgator has never been down for 0.1% of the service time before. Their performance has been widely discussed by web hosting review website. This is one of the impressive works done by them.

Hostgator Customer Support

Customer support is always one of the deciding factors of the success of a hosting company. Hostgator apparently understand it thoroughly because besides the conventional support medium like forum, ticket submitting, telephone, email and etc, the CEO actually does attend to complaints personally. Of cause with the active role played by the CEO, they have adopted a very good customer support. Perhaps this is how they show their emphasis in user experiences.

Hostgator Pricing

Hostgator hosting is not the cheapest web hosting available. However, they are certainly a bargain web hosting. For $7.95/mo you pay, the services you get from them include storage, bandwidth, 24/7 support, perhaps someone working 24 hours to monitor the data center, excellent performance and branded web hosting. This is definitely worth more than what you pay.

Besides these few features, there are many more plus points Hostgator has like user friendliness with cPanel and free site transfer service from the staff. Because of their quality, they have won numerous awards too. As summary Hostgator Baby 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 green energy approach help save the world too.

Daren is a writer and webmaster. His Hostgator 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 here.

The 4 Must Know Ways to Web Hosting Comparison

2008-11-02T11:17:00.002-08:00

By Daren Albom

Whether you like it or not, internet has become a commodity in life. And because of this trend, web hosting providers have pop up like mushroom after downpour offering their service. Everyone is claiming to have the best web hosting service in the world. Almost everybody is overselling on the service in order to stand up as the leaders. Therefore as consumers like us, it is utmost importance to know to differentiate the good hosting providers and the bad one. Here is a list of criteria you might take in consideration in picking web hosting.

Performance

A good web hosting providers always has a good performance. Does not matter whether the hosting is a famous hosting or a hosting company in the backyard, hosting performance should always be your first concern. After all unlimited storage will be meaningless if you get an unstable hosting with 4 days down in 1 week. To compare the web hosting performance is easy. Check out hosting review site and see what others have to say about it. Some review site even pay to monitor the hosting uptime where you can justify the performance of the hosting providers using the review site data.

Location

Location of the web hosting providers in fact does not reflect the quality of web hosting. Location should be one of the considerations is because you should put your targeted users as first priority. If your visitors are from local and you host your website else where, it will somehow affect the loading speed of the website. However, this issue has been resolved bit by bit by the fast growing telecommunication technology. Once you have fast speed internet connections the location can be eliminated from the list. But no matter how, pre caution is always recommended.

Hosting Features

Web hosting features should be on of your main concerns because these are what you get with the money you pay. Hosting features inclusive of many aspect and the most popular aspects is the storage space. Storage space determines how many files and data you can store in your web hosting. If you get big size storage, you can build more features and make your idea a realistic easier; if you get small size storage, you will be sometime limited. The second most popular aspect in web hosting is bandwidth. Bandwidth is the resources pulled out from the server computer when your users request files and data from your website. Therefore the bigger the bandwidth is, the more simultaneous requests can be handled by the server computer. What happens when the bandwidth being consumed is more than as designated is your website will go down as a result of congestion. Therefore it is important to have bigger bandwidth to cater for spike of traffic. These 2 aspects can be easily justified on web hosting review website.

The amount of allowed domain hosted should be another aspect as well. We call the extra domains as add on domains. Some hosting companies only allow 1 domain name per hosting account and some allow unlimited add on domains. Apparently enough if the hosting company allows only 1 domain, you can only host 1 website in that particular hosting regardless of how big is the storage of hosting. In another hand, you can host unlimited website with unlimited add on domains. Of cause the latter case will not be useful if the hosting storage space is an issue. Therefore add on domains should work closely with the bandwidth and storage space.

Scripts & Compatibility

Most of the hosting plans come with free scripts. Check what the free scripts are and how you can utilize from them. In fact those scripts are only useful for certain website. If there is no scripts that helps you, scripting is not an extra point for that particular hosting providers. For example if you are building a hobbyist website sharing your thoughts and knowledge, you will not find CubeCart shopping cart useful. But if you are building a business blog, blogging software like Wordpress in the scripts library will definitely help.

If you are a web builder, I am sure you understand the importance of the software compatibility of web hosting. This is because with more compatibility you get more flexibility in using your favorite software and programming language. Check whether the hosting provider supports the programming language you use or not. For usual case major web developing software like Dreamweaver and Frontpage are supported.

These 4 points will be the most critical consideration points you should take note of. Of cause there are other important points like customer support and pricing but I believe if a web hosting can handle the above mentioned criteria they will not have any problems taking care of other important points My final thought is that in choosing a good web hosting, you should always know what you need and what is your end result. If you already knew that the website you build will bring a lot of traffics and ton of income, why not just plan properly and get the site built on a quality web hosting. I am sure with that it will save you a lot of headache later on.

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 here.

Five Questions You Should Always Ask Your Web Hosting Provider

2008-11-02T11:17:00.001-08:00

By Dan Thompson

When you are considering various services to host your online business, you need to be very critical of certain attitudes and practices that will have a direct effect on your success as an Internet Marketer. It's one thing to look for a service to host your hobby site or family contact site and quite another when you are counting on reliability, technical support and a reasonable response time when you are having a problem with your business site. Before you drag out your credit card and purchase hosting services, here's nine areas you should investigate first:

Generally, you should be able to find some of this information on their sales site, but, if not, ask how long the company has been in business and how many sites they have hosted. It wouldn't be a bad idea to ask for a few URLs so you can see how fast the pages and the links to other pages load.

Next, you need to know something about their data center and their backup processes that will protect your website in case of a power outage or other acts of Nature and equipment failures. Find out what their guarantees are for uptimes. When their servers go down, your customers cannot find you, costing you sales. You should be able to find out their bandwidth allocation for each hosting level in their online sales literature. If not, ask.

Security is the third area you should question. It is important that you know how they will protect your business from viruses, spamming and hijacking. If they don't monitor site security and protect you 24/7, find another hosting service.

Hosting services normally offer several plans for you to choose from. These plans offer different options designed to cover a wide array of needs. You should ask how many sites they host on the web server used for your plan. In this case, less is better. It would also be handy to know how they protect and host your databases. "Will your database be hosted on another server?" is the question to ask.

Though all of these areas are important to investigate, the area you should be very concerned about is technical support. Anything less than 24/7 is putting your business at risk. You need to know how to contact Technical Service when you need to. Get a phone number and call it once in a while at different times during the day and night. Make sure you do it on weekends and holidays, if one is close to when you are planning on purchasing hosting services.

If there's no response, you will be tossing your business into a wasteland. If something goes wrong on their servers and you cannot reach a live person, you are helpless. Email contact and Help Desk inquiries are not the same as 24/7 personal contact with a person who is supposed to protect your business.

A proactive approach to hosting will save you a lot of headaches in the future. Don't be afraid to ask questions and wait for the answers. It's YOUR business, after all.

Dan Thompson is a veteran website designer and has used numerous web hosts in his time. Dan specializes in writing web host reviews, his latest website is a review of the popular web host, Hostmonster. You can view Dan's latest web hosting review at http://www.hostmonster-the-review.com

How Much Should You Pay For Quality Website - Blog Hosting?

2008-11-01T12:26:00.001-07:00

By Tom Thomas

If you own a company or are considering an online business, you will most likely want to set up a paid web hosting account. Although there are free website hosting companies out there, their reliability is poor and you will have to put up with random ads that may not be related to your business or that may be down-right objectionable.

So, paid website hosting is the way to go for reliability and complete control of your site. These days paid hosting accounts are inexpensive, making them the preferred solution for anyone even remotely serious about their web presence.

But what exactly is a website host?

Briefly, it's a place to put your website so that the rest of the world can visit it. Hosting companies run web servers. Simply put, web servers are computers that are attached to the Internet and can communicate with all other computers online. And that means your customers!

The bad news: To maintain this service costs hosting companies money, so there are charges for you to host your website on their servers. The good news: A typical website owner's costs used to be quite high, but prices have come down considerably in recent years. And, at the same time, the features offered have become much more robust.

How much does web hosting cost?

Anywhere from $3.99 to hundreds per month. But for the typical small business or online entrepreneur, quality feature-filled website hosting can be purchased for $3.99 - $7.99 per month.

Why the range in pricing? As you might imagine $3.99 / month web hosting packages normally include fewer features than their $7.99 / month counterparts.

To give you an idea of the differences, let's consider two of the most critical features of any web hosting package: bandwidth and disk space.

What is Bandwidth?

Bandwidth is also called "data transfer" or "traffic". So if you see any of those terms associated with a gigabyte or gb or GB value then that feature is actually bandwidth.

It sounds like a very technical term, but bandwidth is simply the number of gigabytes of data that your website is allowed to transfer from the web hosting server to your users in one month. A gigabyte is roughly a billion bytes of data.

You'll want enough bandwidth to insure that all your customers can access your website without exceeding your monthly data transfer quota. These days you will see typical monthly bandwidth offered in the range of 300gb all the way up to unlimited!

To give you an idea of the amount of bandwidth you may need...

For the average business website with a few thousand visitors per month and less than 100 average-sized web pages, 300gb is probably many gigabytes beyond what's needed. But you may have spurts of traffic, so the extra included gigabytes of bandwidth can be useful to have.

(For a detailed explanation of Bandwidth requirements, please read: Web Hosting Features: What is Bandwidth and Why Should I Care?)

What is Disk Space?

Web space or disk space is the total number of megabytes or gigabytes a web hosting company gives you to hold the HTML and images that will be displayed on your website when your web pages are viewed.

However, your web space also includes website log files, FrontPage extensions, PHP files, CGI programs, externally linked CSS and Javascript files, and usually email accounts as well as space for your databases. (For a detailed explanation of these terms, please read: Web Hosting Features: What is Web Space and How Much is Enough?)

How much space do you need?

As in our example above, if your website consists of 100 pages with just a few medium-sized graphics per page, then you probably only need 20 megabytes (that's megabytes, not gigabytes) of disk space. However, there are other website features like forms automation, photo hosting, data gathering, or blogging that can substantially increase your need for disk space.

Not to worry... because disk space is cheap for your hosting company, they can offer a lot of space for a low monthly rate. For example, even the least expensive paid hosting company offers 10gb of disk space, which is almost overkill for the typical small business website.

Of course, if you're running a membership website or allowing your users to upload data or pictures, then you might need almost unlimited amounts of disk space. Fortunately, there are inexpensive web hosting packages that offer just that. In fact, many of the $7.99 / month hosting packages offer unlimited disk space (as well as unlimited bandwidth).

The best thing to do is to read reviews of hosting companies that you are considering and only pay for features that you'll use. In the event you become wildly successful (and I hope you do), be sure your hosting company can grow with you. They should be able to offer additional features, like increased bandwidth and disk space, as you need them.

Looking for inexpensive and reliable web hosting for your website or blog? You'll be surprised at the low prices you'll pay for quality website hosting today.

For the latest reviews of the Best Web Hosting plans available, visit http://www.BestMoneyMakersGuide.com/hosting

Reprint Permissions: Feel free to reprint or reuse this article, but please follow these simple rules: use the article in its entirety, without changes, and include the author's resource information with a link to the author's website, as shown here.

How to Save Bandwidth For Your Web Hosting

2008-11-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

By Phil Anderson

It's confusing between bandwidth and data transfer, especially when web hosting companies are using the terms without much explanation. For clarification, bandwidth refers to the measurement of maximum data that can be transferred in a given time; while data transfer is the amount of data can be transferred. Fundamentally, we can understand data transfer as the consumption of bandwidth.

Hosting bandwidth affect a website performance directly. Website with lower bandwidth loads slower; vice versa website loads faster with huge bandwidth. Regardless of users Internet connection speed, your website will load slowly when the data transfer capacity is running low. Some web users will need to wait for their turn to access your website whenever the bandwidth is temporarily fully used.

How you can save bandwidth?

As bandwidth is an important asset for every website, web owners or designers should always build their website with minimum bandwidth requirement. Fancy flash presentation, huge audio and video files streaming, and high resolution images are all huge bandwidth eater. You should avoid using any of them if your web host is running out of bandwidth.

Keeping your web design clean and simple reduce bandwidth usage. Nested tables and excessive empty tags are always wasting the server resources thus should be avoided. Try design your website with CSS and JavaScript kept externally instead of burying them in every single page of your website.

Also, out of control robots can also suck down your bandwidth like a black hole. Avoid unknown bots crawling your website via a filter list on robots.txt also helps a lot in reducing bandwidth usage.

A final words for those who are getting started - getting an affordable but yet reliable web host is always the most important thing when starting of a new website.

I would recommend Hostgator for those who are looking for a shared hosting as they are offering quite some good bargain at the moment. My advice to you is to take advantage on this and save some quick bucks for your hosting costs. But hey, that's my personal findings based on my own preference - in case you are doubtful, why not read further on Hostgator review?

Article by Phil Anderson.

Unlimited Bandwidth Hosting - Should You Go For It?

2008-11-01T12:24:00.002-07:00

By Maryse Buultjens

The two main items you look for when purchasing hosting is web space and bandwidth. Web space is the amount of space on your hosting server to host your website. Bandwidth is the amount of bytes available to transfer web pages from your site to visitors when they come to your site on a monthly basis. Text and images on a website consume capacity or bandwidth on the web. Both web space and bandwidth cost money.

The data that is carried around the web is by network lines and these have a finite capacity. The amount of data that can be transferred at any given point in time is limited. Similarly, the physical size of the hard drive of a web server is what determines the amount of space of the hard drive. This space is also fairly limited.

How much web space and bandwidth do you really require? 50 Mb or less of space would be adequate for a 200 page website which would include text and images. 1 Gb to 5 Gb's would be adequate bandwidth space for the same features of a website.

Sometimes when you go to the address bar and type in the address of the website and hit the "Enter" button you may get an error message saying that the site is not available and that the server has reached its maximum bandwidth allowance. This occurs when you have more visitors than the bandwidth can cope with. This very often happens with unlimited bandwidth hosting.

A lot of hosting providers today offer unlimited bandwidth hosting. What they are trying to imply is that an unlimited amount of traffic can come to your website with no implications at all. Let me tell you unlimited bandwidth hosting does not exist. It sounds very enticing though, doesn't it? This is just a marketing gimmick to get you to buy. When such companies advertise unlimited bandwidth hosting they are hoping that the website will not exceed its bandwidth as most websites generally use a very small amount. But on a particular day your website may exceed that bandwidth as the number of visitors increase. That is the day you will not want your website to go down, as loss of visitors to your site means loss of business to you.

So then do you go with companies that advertise unlimited bandwidth hosting? The answer is yes, but please keep in mind there is nothing called unlimited bandwidth hosting - just CHECK the company's Terms of Service as to what they really mean by it.

Choose from a wide range of hosting accounts at very reasonable prices. Visit http://www.cheapbusinesshostingblog.com/

Linux Or Windows System

2008-11-01T12:24:00.001-07:00

By Justin Knights

In the industry of web hosting, there are two kinds of system to choose from. In the market today, all web hosting companies will either provide a Windows plan or a Linux plan. Foe those who favor the Windows plan, they will have to accept the fact that they will need to pay slightly more because of the license issue related to Microsoft. Like many other choices that we have to make, which one should we choose?

Most of the computers in the world today are in the Windows operating system. In fact 95% of all computers are using Windows worldwide. Therefore, this gives Windows web hosting system a big advantage because they dominate the computer users in the world and because of this, most people will go for a Windows based web hosting.

However, according to a study by securityspace.com, Linux based operating system seems to have an edge on Windows system. Their study found that Windows system is behind by 20%. This means that a Linux operating system will perform better than a Windows operating system.

Even though Linux seems to have the upper hand on things, using a Windows operating system would be advisable if you are using .NET technology which includes ASP.NET. This is something that only Windows system can support and Linux system has no way o supporting this technology. By using the Windows platform, you will also be able to access your database, for instance, the MySQL class database. Added bonus when you use a Windows system is the ability to use Microsoft programs along with your operating system.

For Linux system, you can run it in Apache, MySQL and PHP. You can have a good infrastructure of tools to build your website very professionally. We say this because the PHP works more efficiently with a Linux server compared to a Windows server. Another added feature for Linux is the price of it. It cost 20% less than a Windows server. Therefore, you just have to decide according to your preferences because Linux could also serve you very well and efficiently.

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.

Dedicated Hosting For an Online Shopping Website

2008-11-01T12:23:00.004-07:00

By Justin Knights

For any online business to achieve success, there are many small parts in many different aspect that need to be tune to be in harmony. Especially for a website that is related t e-commerce. A website that is related to online transaction needs all the reliability it can get. Therefore, most of the e-commerce websites around are hosted by a dedicated web hosting system. The cost may be high but business owners are willing to pay rather than taking the risk.

A dedicated server is a server that hosts only one website. There are no other websites in the server. Therefore, all the resources are used by one single website in that dedicated server. A dedicated server will give you the best security compared to other forms of web hosting. So, there will be no risk of being affected by other websites like it happens in a shared web hosting situation. There will be no spam, bugs or virus which comes from another website.

Having the whole server, there will be more storage space, bandwidth and resource that can be used by that one particular website. This means better response and increase in speed and uptime giving visitors or clients a better experience in transactions or other activities that take place in your website.

With a dedicated server, you will also have more control over your website. You can choose the type of control panel you desire and also choose the functionality that suits your operation.

However, not everything is perfect with the dedicated server. It does have some minor disadvantages. Firstly, the price is much higher and you will need more time and requirement to monitor your website. If you were to hire technical personnel, it will add up your cost in your website expenditure. However, if you are well educated with the technical issues of web hosting, you could still do it yourself. Therefore, hiring another person will require a labor cost which you will need to bear.

So, should you go for dedicated server? If you are serious about your business and have the money to invest in a website, go for a dedicated hosting because it will definitely provide you the kind of service or resources you need. If you are planning on a small or medium scale business, maybe a shared hosting would do just fine for you. If your business expands, you could switch to a dedicated hosting at a later time.

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.

The 4 Things You Should Expect From Your Web Hosting Package

2008-11-01T12:23:00.003-07:00

By Daren Albom

Often time cost will be the first priority in choosing web hosting for most of the people. Although cheap web hosting saves operating cost but unfortunately always those are web hosting which associated with low quality. Poor support and reliability is sometimes a great issue with cheap hosting. Therefore by compromising the cost with quality is always something not worthwhile.

Ideally the web hosting that we are carving for is a hosting with high standards and low price. High standard here means a better uptime, a better customer support, a better reliability and etc. Since we already knew what we are indeed carving for, we should draw a clear line on that and no compromises should happen beyond the line.

Perhaps we should state clearly on the line we have just drawn.

Firstly we should by all mean to eliminate web hosting with bad performance. We want a web hosting with good up time because down time not only hurts your web site functionality but also affect your e mail. You will not be able to access your website as well as your email. There are so many web hosting companies outside that fight to serve you. You should always look for a hosting with better uptime like 99.9% uptime.

Secondly will be the customer support. A 24/7 customer support is a minimum requirement for your web hosting providers as internet is something that is borderless, timeless and dimensionless. Anytime there will be something happening in the internet and you need somebody to attend to your queries anytime anywhere.

Thirdly it is the back up of server. Regular back up is proven to be the best way to prevent any disaster from hard drive failure or any other accidents. A good service provider should always have a redundant server to back up all the data, be it a load sharing or N+1 redundancy. Only with regular back up your website and data are secured with the hosting company. (Of cause you should always do your own back up too)

Fourthly will be the added services. Added services can be free website promoting credits, free web site scripts, free web site transfer, free site builder software and etc. These added values will be helpful to build a decent website with least effort. This can be evaluated from the full hosting features of webhosting. Check what kind of software and program that they have.

At last only the pricing of web hosting should come in. Pricing no doubt is an important factor but without the above mentioned criterion, you should never look at such provider because it will be classified as poor quality hosting. Remember you are building a website which will serve hundred or thousands of visitors. Web hosting as the foundation of the website should be the best quality of all elements in your site.

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

Do You Own a Drupal Powered Website?

2008-11-01T12:23:00.001-07:00

By Ben A Holmes

I recently ran into a hosting website called HotDrupal.com - on the recommendation of someone I trust, I decided to move my website from a shared hosting package to a new HotDrupal account.

As my website was on a new hosting package sponsored by a long-standing company - and had very few websites per server - I really didn't expect to see any tremendous improvements in efficiency or speed.

Boy was I surprised! My website, after being moved - just about tripled it's speed in producing a webpage. I was downright shocked at the difference in speed, it was very noticeable!

It seems that HotDrupal has optimized their servers quite well for Drupal - one of the little tricks they employ is putting the MySQL database on the same server as your website. At most other hosting companies, your Drupal site will have to network to another server for MySQL database queries - and every microsecond counts when you need to run a large number of database queries for each webpage.

My site, for example - executed 268 MySQL database queries in 123.54 milliseconds, and rendered the entire home page in just 292.34 milliseconds. If you're on shared hosting - run the Devel module, and compare your results to mine - you might just decide that HotDrupal.com is worth taking a look at!

Another trick that HotDrupal utilizes is duplicate servers - the only programs running on the server hosting your website are those that are absolutely essential to serving webpages. All other programs, such as your Cpanel or email programs, are on a separate server. This isn't something you'll find at any shared hosting company - and you aren't likely to find faster speed until you can afford to move to a dedicated host.

Until that time - head over and take a look at HotDrupal - you'll be glad you did!

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Ben A Holmes runs http://www.BurningKnife.com - a community website with tons of free information, and where people help others with website creation, Search Engine Optimization, and driving traffic. ============================================================

3 Tips to Help You Select a Good Web Hosting Provider

2008-10-31T13:08:00.001-07:00

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

2008-10-31T13:07:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-30T14:15:00.002-07:00

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

2008-10-30T14:15:00.001-07:00

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.

Bluehost is a Strong Web Hosting Provider

2008-10-28T22:17:00.001-07:00

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

2008-10-28T22:16:00.006-07:00

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

2008-10-28T22:16:00.005-07:00

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

2008-10-28T22:16:00.003-07:00

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

2008-10-28T22:16:00.001-07:00

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?

2008-10-28T22:15:00.004-07:00

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

2008-10-28T22:15:00.003-07:00

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?

2008-10-28T22:15:00.001-07:00

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

2008-10-28T22:14:00.002-07:00

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

2008-10-28T22:14:00.001-07:00

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

Log on to your server.

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.

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

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)

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.

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-----

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

2008-10-26T05:00:00.001-07:00

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.

Discount Web Hosting Services Are Easy to Find

2008-10-26T04:54:00.002-07:00

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?

2008-10-26T04:54:00.001-07:00

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

2008-10-26T04:52:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-26T04:51:00.002-07:00

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

2008-10-26T04:51:00.001-07:00

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.