How Much Hosting Space Does Your Website Require

By Bob Willis

If you are planning to host a website but are not sure how much disk space your website would require, it is important to do some research and ascertain the amount of space that your website would use up. Your web-hosting provider would offer you large amount of disk space that could be a tad heavy on your wallet and disrupt your hosting budget. Therefore it becomes imperative to first ascertain the amount of disk space your website would require and whether you really need an expensive web hosting solution to host your website.

For example, a file size of 3,300 KB would use up a little over 3Mb of disk space. So we could infer that a 20 page website would use 3Mb or 20Mb=140 pages (approx). You can analyze the website requirements and then decide on the amount of disk space that your website would require.

Calculating File Size:

In order to calculate the amount of disk space required, the user needs to understand how exactly is file size calculated. A bit is the smallest unit on the computer. One bit is one electronic on or off pulse. 8 bits strung together make one byte. Now 1024 bytes together make one unit of information, termed as kilobyte and 1024 kilobytes= 1 Megabyte. Most of the graphics and web pages are measured in terms of bytes or kilobytes.

To find the total file size, right click on the root folder where the website is located. This will show you the total size of the website as well as the number of files and folders contained within the website. This method can be employed if the user is using Dreamweaver. In case the user is using FrontPage Editor, then the reports view tab (site summary) will show the total file size.

If you plan to add more graphics, pages or other features (like scripts, databases) in the future, then most web-hosting providers offer a convenient and hassle-free upgrade. So it is only wise to start with a small basic package if that befits your website requirements. He basic hosting packages come equipped with adequate features and disk space to ensure smooth functioning of your website. However, it is advisable to check with your web hosting provider if they offer a hassle-free upgrade of your hosting account as you grow your website. This will save you the hassle of changing web hosts as well as save you other expenses like the initial set-up fee that some hosting providers charge.

It is important to remember here that web hosting is a competitive industry and hosting providers could employ various marketing techniques like "unlimited disk space" in a bid to lure customers. It is advisable to ignore such promotional advertisements as most of the unlimited packages are either highly priced or the companies do not deliver quality services. It is useless to pay for disk space or features that are not required for your website. Analyze and exercise good judgment when it comes to ascertaining the type of hosting package that you need.

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Using Direct Marketing Techniques in Web Hosting

By Bob Willis

In an industry where web-hosting companies are clambering to get more exposure, reach a wider range of prospects and gain more clients; the competition seems to be only getting fiercer. That said; there seems to be no abatement in the emergence of new web-hosting companies in the industry. Now most of the hosting providers employ the regular marketing techniques in order to advertise their web hosting services. These could include hosting directory listings, banner and/or pop up ads, PPC (Pay-per-click search engine placements), link exchanges and a host of other techniques. While these strategies have proven to be considerably effective in driving traffic, it has not yet delivered optimum results in terms of the expected growth or ROI.

Amore effective approach therefore needs to be considered given the intense competition that the industry is currently subjected to. These marketing techniques could include either print advertising or/and direct marketing. This approach towards adopting a broader marketing strategy will also result in an increase of the market share. There are many online companies out there who are offering direct marketing services for you to achieve your business targets.

Direct marketing could involve contacting a targeted audience. This would comprise of potential customers who interested in buying your web hosting services or perhaps need to keep themselves abreast with the latest news and information on the web hosting industry.

The technique of sending out direct emails to a targeted audience will help you reach a potential customer base. The success of this campaign would however be dependent on two major factors:

How targeted your potential customer list is, and how attractive your offer is to recipients.

The web host needs to understand the exact needs of his customer and offer cost-effective hosting solutions coupled with value-added features.

With direct marketing campaigns, finding a suitable list of potential customers could be catchy. With over 10,000 business-to-business lists, the relevant demographics are missing from these lists and so the web-hosting firms are not equipped with enough information of their potential customer's websites.

Fortunately, recent technology can extract and develop e-business profiles from Web sites and provide hosts with important information that allows them to better promote targeted packages to the right customer base.

Fortunately, recent technology can extract and develop e-business profiles from Web sites and provide web hosts with important and relevant information that allows them to improve upon their targeted packages and reach the right customer base. This will help the web host to create a customized business list that corresponds to their technical target market criteria.

Web hosts should also be careful in considering the source of their data while establishing a direct marketing campaign. Most hosting companies rely on the WHOIS data, which is not only inaccurate but also illegal to use.

With the latest data extraction technology (for example, Netvention technology) crawls and extracts key business information (such as company name, address, phone, fax and contact names) directly from corporate Web sites.

Once the web host is equipped with accurate data, they can employ the direct marketing campaigns in order to accelerate business growth.

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How to Reduce Web Hosting Bandwidth

By Bob Willis

At times exceeding your monthly bandwidth would mean higher monthly hosting bills and that could have long-term implications on your hosting budget. Some hosting companies may charge an additional fee for exceeding the monthly bandwidth allowance also referred to as "bandwidth overage". For the novice Webmaster it is important to understand what exactly is bandwidth usage, how much bandwidth is required by his/her website and most importantly how can he reduce his website hosting bandwidth.

Bandwidth refers to the total amount of information that has been served to your web site visitors each month. So every time, the visitor requests information or downloads files from your website, your bandwidth would go up by a specific amount. The size of the file is directly proportional to the bandwidth usage. Also, more the traffic your website receives, more would be the bandwidth consumption. Bandwidth or the data transfer rate is the speed with which data can be transmitted from one device to another. Data rates are often measured in megabits (million bits) or megabytes (million bytes) per second.

It is important to determine the amount of bandwidth that your website would require in order to balance your hosting budget. You can determine your bandwidth requirement by estimating the file size for each web page and then multiplying that figure by the number of pages on your website. Let us explain this with an example. If a web page comprises of two 15Kb images and 3Kb of html, then the web page would have a total data of 33kb. Now multiply this by the number of page views you expect to have per month (e.g. 100,000 per month). This would mean that 3.3Gb of data needs to be transferred per month for that page.

Now by calculating the final figure for each page you would get a rough estimate of the amount of bandwidth required for your website.

If the user requires a reduction in the monthly bandwidth consumption, then a few points and tips can help him achieve this.

The user can reduce the size of the files on their website like the images and graphics. So for a large image size of (e.g. 200KB), by reducing the file size to 20KB the web owner can dramatically minimize their bandwidth usage as well as speed up their website performance.

Websites that feature MP3 downloads, movies, music, large images or other multimedia enabled features, then the website bandwidth requirement would increase substantially.

On the other hand, a simple text based website or a website featuring html pages or small images would require a lower bandwidth.

It is vital to determine beforehand the amount of bandwidth that your website would in order to avoid loss in revenue or traffic. Once you have a specific figure, you will be ready to receive more traffic and subsequent sales. You can also avoid paying a higher bandwidth fee for additional bandwidth usage.

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Does Your Website Need a "Website Monitoring Service?"

By Bob Willis

So you have managed to achieve higher search engine rankings and are really working hard towards effectively marketing your website. Well, these efforts would definitely yield profits in the long run, all this would be of little value if your website and servers are not fully operational or consistently operational.

With website hosting various issues including hardware failures, database hacking, software lockups, viruses, worms, security issues, service patches and Internet connectivity come into play and need to be addressed from time to time in order to ensure your online success.

In order to resolve, abate or avoid the above problems, web masters can register with server, email and website monitoring services.

So what exactly are these monitoring services? Web site monitoring refers to monitoring the operational status and performance of a web site that uses HTTP and/or HTTPS. Email monitoring on the other hand refers to the monitoring, operational status and performance of SMTP servers in a bid to ensure that email flow is smooth and timely. Server monitoring refers to monitoring the operational status and performance of other server services such as FTP.

When a webmaster has set up an account with a web hosting company it is important to keep track of their website performance, any downtime period experienced and other security concerns. This process can further be fortified by utilizing the services mentioned above.

Different monitoring services use different techniques in order to determine and verify the operational status of the websites. Some simply use ping to determine the server response and record this response time interval. Other services may use more complex or advanced techniques such as checking web page code, database connectivity, keyword verification, and email round robin. It is important to note here that while a ping request may verify the power of the server it cannot guarantee whether a web site or the server service is operational.

The customer gets access to detailed statistics and this helps them verify their SLA and QOS agreements. Most of the monitoring services would require executables to be installed on your servers. In some cases, the monitoring services will require a firewall rule to be implemented if the server or website is behind a firewall.

Monitoring Intervals: Monitoring "interval" is simply the frequency in which a site or server is checked. Most monitoring packages range between 2 to 60 minutes. For a mission critical website or server, the 2 minute monitoring intervals are required in order to obviate probable revenue loss.

In the event of any problem, the monitoring firm would in most cases contact you by email. An email enabled cellular phone is highly advisable in order to ensure delivery of constant updates. It is important here to read the fine print as certain monitoring firms may charge additional fee for pager messages if you happen to exceed the specific number of monthly notifications.

So no matter which website hosting services you choose, monitoring services can play a vital role and enhance your online success.

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Real Horror Stories Web Hosts Don't Want You to Know

By Michael Collins

Go to any web site hosting provider's home page and all you'll see are claims about how wonderful they are. There will plenty of testimonials from satisfied customers raving about the low prices and outstanding service. But before you sign on the dotted line, remember that the purpose of that page is to convince you to sign up with them. You've got to take their claims with a grain of salt because its in their best interest to show you nothing but positive customer feedback.

What you have to keep in mind is that almost all web hosts have customers who could tell real horror stories about poor service, shoddy treatment, over-billing, and major web site downtime. You won't find these complaints anywhere on the web hosting service's web sites, but its important that you seek them out.

If a web host has a bad reputation and an army of angry and unsatisfied customers with gripes, wouldn't you want to hear what they have to say before you handed over any of your hard earned cash?

Now don't get me wrong. All web hosts (and all businesses for that matter) are bound to have a handful of unhappy customers. After all, you can't make everyone happy all of the time. One or two complaints is understandable. But if there's a clear pattern of customer dissatisfaction you should be very suspicious of them.

Take a little time to do some research before choosing a web host. Use Google to search for complaints and negative reviews. You'll often find unhappy customers complaining on blogs or forums.

You should also check out http://webhosting.youcompareit.com where you can read actual customer comments, complaints, and ratings of dozens of popular web hosts. Read what real people have to say and you can be sure you're choosing the best host.

Explaining Virtual Private Servers

By James Betchley

Virtual Private Servers offer the same features as a dedicated server by using software to split a singe server in to several virtual servers, this means that the cost of renting the actual server is greatly reduced as it is split between several customers without compromising the security or administrative control that is associated with dedicated server hosting.

In contrast with shared hosting each VPS customer receives root access to their Virtual Server meaning they can customise their services to suit their individual business needs. Each VPS client has their own disk space, bandwidth, memory and allotment of system resources which will not be affected by the traffic or usage of the customers which co-habit the rest of their physical server, this is known as performance isolation. In-addition to performance isolation a VPS is isolated from errors, viruses and other problems which may be present in another VPS within the same bit of hard ware, this functional isolation also provides greater security for businesses engaged in E-commerce and allows users to install their own software packages relevant to their business area allowing the use of customized shopping cart software.

Due to the great secure functionality offered by VPS hosting it is often the next step from a medium to large shared hosting plan for those who wish to have greater control of their web space and enhanced security for conducting online transactions. Many web hosting providers are now offering this intermediate, and due to the obvious benefits it has seen a surge in popularity of late.

Reviewed on 4 Sept 2008 by James Betchley, Administrator of Which Domain Host a great resource for web hosting guidance.

How to Find Affordable Web Hosting Companies

By Gabriel Killian

Are you looking for cheap website hosting? Are you an Internet Marketer or Online business that is on a tight budget? Learn about awesome ways to save at the server.

When it comes down to it, in any online business, great web hosting is a must have. Below are steps to help you figure out what hosting is right for you and find tips for getting the cheapest hosting available and still reserve some room for quality.

1. A variety of websites? Use a variety of hosting companies if you plan to link them together! As far as search engines are concerned, it will give you no seo value if two of the websites you link together are on the same shared server. It is suggested that if you have 2 or more websites you want to link together, get two hosting packages. This will allow you to have a little more long-term SEO benefits from your websites.

2. The longer the commitment, the better deal you will get. If you know that you plan to have a website for any given amount of time, purchasing longer hosting terms. This will help you save money and you won't have to worry about it auto-deducting every month. Think long-term!

3. There are hundreds and hundreds of web hosting companies available, choose the one that fits your specific needs first. Whether its server space or bells or whistles, every hosting company offers a little something different. Figure out your needs first then go forth.

4. Have a bunch of websites you need to publish? Some hosting companies offer unlimited domains. Or you can purchase "reseller" accounts to get unlimited hosting accounts. Watch your server space though. Sometimes hosting companies can charge extra if you go over your limit.

5. Read hosting reviews and testimonials - These are great indicators of how good a hosting company really is and how much pride they take in their services. Find out what others are saying about a particular affordable hosting company.

6. Have questions? Ask first! A hosting companies ability to respond to your needs in a timely manner is quite possibly one of the best indicators to how responsive and reliable your cheap hosting company really is. When times are tough, will they be there to support you? How good is there customer service really? Ask and find out.

7. If all else fails, demand a refund and search somewhere else. Hosting services should respect your take on their business and should refund you if you are not satisfied (check their return policy to make sure). They may give you a pro-rated amount back, but something is better than nothing. Then continue the search.

These are simple ways to protect yourself and get higher quality and affordable hosting without being had. Below you will find a list of recommended resources and hosting reviews to help you get the best hosting at the best prices.

For a Huge list of Cheap Web Hosting Companies and Internet Marketing tools visit http://www.Inferno-Marketing.com Get my Free Article Marketing Guide at ProfitFromArticles.com!

Data Center Security

By Saleh Tousi

Data security is a major concern for people using colocation. After all, your precious data is located in a remote facility that you have no control over. Fortunately, data centers understand your concerns and have built in security features to ensure your data is safe and sound. Depending on the provider there will be different security features. But you can expect to see some or all of these features at your colocation facility depending on size and client needs:

Security Guard. Many facilities have onsite security guards monitoring the site 24-hours a day. The security guard is responsible for verifying user's identities and making sure they are authorized to enter the facility. They also make sure the site is secure throughout the day and night and provide an immediate response to any potential problems.

Uninterruptable Power Supply. In the event of a power-outage, this power supply will act as a back-up to your servers. With this feature you won't lose your data or service because of power-outages.

Climate Control. This element of security is crucial to your servers. If the room is too hot, your servers could over-heat. If it's too cold, they won't work properly. If the room is too damp, it could cause condensation on the machines and if it's too dry, it could cause problems with static. All of these factors need to be taken into account. Colocation facilities have climate controlled rooms that are set to industry specified standards for temperature and humidity to keep your machines safe and running properly.

Central Back-up Recovery System. In the event that something does go wrong with the server, this feature provides an extra copy of your data. It's not stored in only one place. Having multiple copies of your data will help protect it and ensure that it doesn't get lost or erased. Additionally many facilities have back-up systems at another location, providing additional security for your data.

Security Cameras. These on-site cameras monitor each row of servers as well as the exits and entrances. If there's a break-in or damage to one of the servers, the facility will be able to identify who is responsible. Cameras are also useful in fire detection as you can see where the fire is coming from in order to better prevent it from spreading.

Fire Control. Data centers are equipped with many redundancies when it comes to fire protection. Early detection smoke alarms are installed in many facilities as well as heat detectors. Walls and floors are made from fire-resistant materials and fire doors prevent the spread of fires to other parts of the facility.

For more information on colocation services, visit Vancouver Colocation, one of the leading colocation providers for small to medium sized businesses in Western Canada.

Colocation Outside of Downtown

By Saleh Tousi

Most of the colocation facilities in the Vancouver area are located in downtown Vancouver. This seems like the obvious place to locate a facility since it's a central location where most people can have easy access to their servers whenever they need to. However, collocating downtown comes with its share of problems as well. With so many options available, you might want to consider collocating outside of downtown.



One of the advantages of collocating outside of downtown is the access to the facility. While you may think it's more convenient to collocate downtown, in actuality, you might have better access to your server if it's not directly downtown. Downtown traffic can be atrocious, especially at peak times. And problems don't wait to occur when the streets are empty late on a Tuesday night. Imagine how long it will take you to access your server when you're stuck in the grid-locked traffic of downtown Vancouver. No one wants to do that. And while you're sitting in traffic cursing at the person who just cut in front of you for the third time, you're losing precious time that you could be using to get your server up and running so you can resume business.



If, on the other hand, you collocate outside of downtown, and the same problem occurs, you have the advantage of cruising down the highway, away from the city and on the less-traveled side streets. SmarttNet is one colocation provider that provides service just outside of Downtown. It's only about a 10 minute drive from Vancouver. And in this case 10 minutes means 10 minutes… not 10 minutes plus 20 minutes of sitting in traffic.



Another advantage of collocating outside of downtown in that it's on a different power grid. Should the power go down in all of Vancouver, the surrounding areas aren't affected, so your server will be safe from harm. While all your business associates who decided to collocate in Vancouver are scrambling to get their sites back up, you'll be calming sitting at your desk, marveling at how beautifully your site is running.



There's something to be said for the personalized attention that comes from working with a smaller company outside of the city. Too many businesses these days feel cold and unwelcoming when you enter. With so many customers it's impossible for them to give you individualized and personal attention. That's what you'll find when you go downtown. Away from the city, it's a different ball-game. You'll feel welcome when you come to update your server. And if you're a regular, you'll get to know the staff and see the same smiling faces every time you come in.



Aside from the exceptional service you'd expect to get from any colocation provider, there are many advantages to collocating outside of the city. If you're considering collocation services for your business needs, you might want to consider collocating outside of the city.

For more information on colocation services, visit Vancouver Colocation, one of the leading colocation providers for small to medium sized businesses in Western Canada.

3 Quick Tips For Finding the Best Website Hosting

By Craig Wilson

1. The first and most obvious step is to have some idea of what your basic needs are before going 'shopping'. Often times you will come across a web host that is offering some great deal or promotion that may look like the answer to your prayers but in truth may be totally unsuitable for your needs. For instance there is no point in signing up for latest and greatest e-commerce site hosting when all you want is a simple blog - no matter how cheap it seems at the time. More often than not once the promotional period is over the price will revert back to their normal charges and you will be paying for something that you do not need or will ever use.

2. A subject that comes up time and time again in the web hosting forums is customer support. This can be the difference between a great host and an absolute nightmare! Even if you have been given a recommendation from someone take the time to do a simple 'Google' of their company name and read what people are saying about them. They might have the cheapest hosting plan around with the most features but if you can't get any help when things turn pear-shaped life can be very hard. Look for a hosting company that offers 24/7 customer support with either email or a toll free phone number.

3. Unlimited this, unlimited that. A lot of the 'cheaper' web hosts offer plans which allow unlimited bandwidth or unlimited addon domains etc etc. Although these plans may be suitable for the majority of webmasters what they are in fact doing is over-selling the amount of space on their servers. What this can mean is that if you are pulling in great amounts of traffic or have a whole boat load of sites to host you may run in to some problems with server response and site down time as the server that they have you on is literally overloaded. For the majority of us this very rarely becomes an issue but it is something that should be kept in mind.

Although looking around for the best web hosting may seem a tad daunting if you take the time to educate yourself on exactly what it is that you need great savings can be made!

If you found these tips helpful there is plenty more information available on selecting a good reliable web host at Web Hosting Bargains. Read full features lists and independent customer feedback for a number of top web hosts at http://web-hosting-bargains.com