Web Design Development Articles

If you are not exactly experienced as a webmaster, all of the information you need to assimilate definitely seems overwhelming. When it comes to hosting, all sorts of terms such as shared hosting, dedicated hosting or Virtual Private Servers may seem like a foreign language. Fortunately for you, things are actually not all that complicated.

Analyzing the Competition

Let’s start with shared hosting: this is basically a hosting plan where you agree to have your website stored on the same server with multiple other sites. Unfortunately, something which is commonly referred to as overselling poses a serious threat. Simply put, a lot of hosts accept way too many websites on the same server. The results are fairly obvious and all of them lead to the same thing, server instability.

A Virtual Private Server, or a VPS, is basically a setup where you actually share server resources with other clients. A server is basically divided into smaller ones, each with its own operating system and each one with the option of being rebooted independently. With dedicated hosting (as the name implies), you’re basically paying in order to have an entire server at your disposal.

Why Choose VPS Hosting?

VPS hosting is the best option out there if you do not want to deal with the server instability which is associated with shared hosting and if your budget or traffic level doesn’t justify going dedicated.

Think about it this way: you could save a buck and just go with a cheap shared hosting plan, but just how much does the traffic which you’d risk losing mean to you? If you want your website to be profitable, you had better make sure that it’s easily accessible. If you pay a couple of dollars per month, you should expect services which are worth exactly that.

On the other hand, dedicated hosting tends to be quite expensive and there’s really no point in spending most of your budget on that, especially if you don’t actually need all of the extra resources. With VPS hosting, one thing is certain: you get what you pay for. You’ll know exactly what you have at your disposal in terms of resources and can easily determine if one plan or another would work best as far as your website is concerned.

Price/Quality - Numbers Speak for Themselves

No matter how experienced you are or how many websites you own, it’s always important to pay special attention to the price/quality factor. With VPS hosting, things are looking extremely promising: you will take advantage of a stable server and quality hosting without having to deal with the impressive costs associated with going dedicated.

It’s really a no-brainer: if you are the type of webmaster who actually thinks before spending money, VPS hosting is definitely the best investment one could ask for. What are you waiting for? Visit your web host of choice, check out the VPS plans that company has to offer and get ready to see your investment pay off.

There are no professionals who can sit and monitor their website’s performance around the clock…it just isn’t possible. So, how do you know when your website is experiencing downtime or other issues that prevent visitors from reaching it?

There are many services now available for anyone who needs to keep an eye on their site. The question for many professionals is usually “I pay for a web hosting service, won’t they let me know?” Unfortunately the answer to that question is “no”. Most web hosting providers just don’t have the ability to monitor the thousands of pages they are hosting. They do provide all kinds of troubleshooting and support for customers experiencing difficulties, but they cannot guarantee round the clock uptime.

While many web hosting providers are beginning to make some ironclad guarantees around uptime, such as a 99.9% guarantee, not all are ready to make such statements. This is the reason so many businesses utilize one of the monitoring services. These are available as free and paid plans, but the benefits from all of them are great.

Generally, the services will use some sort of program or scripting to gauge the function of the site. If at any time a site goes down the monitoring service will alert the website owner, which can be done via email, cell phone or any other preferred contact method. They work in a variety of ways, but most measure the status of an account holder’s site approximately every ten minutes or less. Most make it easy to monitor numerous sites and all have multiple locations to prevent a failure of service should any one monitoring area go down.

What exactly do the monitoring services look for? Generally, they are making sure that your website is never unavailable. While they will not be able to fix things, they will let you know instantly if the site is down. Even a few hours without service can add up to wasted dollars in advertising and loss of sales. This means that with an email or telephone call you can get in touch with your web hosting company to get the problems resolved and the site operational.

Additionally, using a monitoring service also lets a website owner know if their hosting provider is meeting the terms of their contract, and establishes a valid paper trail to prove when or if the provider is in the wrong. This can help to get a refund on fees if the service falls below its guaranteed uptimes.

There are a handful of reasons that anyone will opt to change web hosting providers. Some will find a better deal with another company, some will find that the original server is not meeting the terms of their contract, and others need to increase the size of their site and are choosing a new provider.

These, and many other factors, are valid reasons for changing web hosts, but it is important to remember that a shift in servers can translate to a significant amount of “downtime”, or a period when your site is unavailable. While this instantly means a loss of communication with current customers it also means a loss of potential new customers and money.

So, how do you change web hosts without any downtime? Well, the answer requires a few considerations:

· Time
· Organization
· Effort

Time - when you have decided that you need to shift from one provider to another it is critical to remember that your original host may not be happy with your decision. It is advisable to wait to let the current hosting service know of your decision to terminate service until all files have been transferred and the new site is fully operational. Why the secrecy? There are many reasons, but the most important is that they may end your service at the moment you make the call. This could mean a loss of data and files, an inability for customers and visitors to find your site and worse it could mean a loss of credibility and money.

Organization - once you have made the choice to change web hosting providers and have located your new service it is time to begin transferring and copying all of the files from your original server. You should all ready be making all changes on your own equipment and then posting them, usually via FTP, to the server. If not you will need to begin doing this in order to always have the hard copy files on your own equipment. Once everything is copied you can go ahead and test the site operationally.

Effort - You may run into a few issues with files or you may find that you need to perform a few annoying tasks in addition to shifting files. Like what? You may need to remove your domain name from the original server, who may serve as the registrar, in order to avoid forwarding fees. You may need to address all of the code on your site to ensure the old URLs are not embedded.

With some planning and hard work you will not experience any downtime, but ultimately the responsibility is on your shoulders.

We all want to do our part to help the environment. Businesses of all kinds and sizes can play a really active role in reducing waste and energy consumption. How? Recycling, purchasing supplies made from recycled materials, telecommuting options, using alternative energy sources and, of course, choosing green web hosting services.

What are green web hosting services? There are a few varieties, but for this discussion we will focus on the groups that use eco-friendly sources for electrical power. Servers are delicate creatures and require everything from stable and cooled environments to massive amounts of electricity. This all adds up to a lot of energy consumption and the green web hosting services work to ensure that they reduce or totally eliminate their reliance on anything but renewable resources.

For example, if a provider is unable to supply their own electrical service through wind, solar, biogas or geothermal equipment they can opt to buy Renewable Energy Certificates. This means that the power they are using is supplied from a company that uses only natural and renewable methods of generating electricity for public consumption.

Of course there are those green web hosting companies that actually create all of their own electricity. These groups will also employ solar panels, wind turbines and other mass energy production techniques to keep their equipment performing at optimal, reliable and impact free levels.

In addition to having no impact on the planet, many of these web hosting companies also make carbon offsetting a possibility as well. This allows other companies who want to mitigate their own greenhouse gas emissions to purchase offsets and thereby underwrite emission reducing projects like the green web host’s wind farm or solar equipment.

The green web hosting providers might also extend special discounts to non-profit agencies and organizations or to companies who offer telecommuting to their staff or employees. They also may provide totally free software; use offices powered entirely by renewable energies and may be completely paperless.

Do they cost more? That is something that requires a little thought to answer. While they may not save loads of money, and run at the same price as many other competitors, it is crucial to remember how a single paperless company can reduce energy and materials wasted by the hundreds of tons. Imagine the positive and beneficial global effects of hundreds of companies participating in the green initiative simply by signing up with a green web hosting service!

There is something to be said about using either shared web hosting solutions or those that are dedicated to a single platform, either Windows based or Linux based. These two represent the most popular solutions on the internet for consumers and businesses to get online and distinct themselves on the information super highway. The former is more popular because of the fact that it is shared, which means within the pipeline, there are a few users, and in some cases, a few hundred and even a few thousand users sharing the server bandwidth.

This is great when you are a simple consumer using the server for more leisure and casual reasons but when you are using the internet as a platform to extend your business, then you need to get a dedicated server. While more expensive, it is a dedicated server with customisable host names and more bandwidth to support your needs. This article will peek a little at the Linux dedicated server and tell you why they are great solutions for your business and in some cases, even personal needs. The reason why shared web hosting is so much more cost effective is because of the reason above - they use one single server in a location that can host tens of thousands of websites all over the world.

Because of volume, the cost goes down; but there are detriments to this, which include things like a shared bandwidth, meaning you will experience slowdowns and technical problems that are universal. With a dedicated Linux server, you will be guaranteed a larger bandwidth and your own personal space online. This is because your website is being handled by one single dedicated server, and because of the resource focus to keeping your website running, there is a higher level of reliability when compared to using shared hosting.

The equipment behind these servers are usually the best in the business, with high end servers being a feature common to Linux dedicated servers, so it is always a good idea to in that direction. You do not want to be caught in a position where you a riding on the back of a technologically inferior server that cannot deliver the power and speed that your website and business demands. With Linux servers, you know you are getting pre-configures and cutting edge equipment. The network connections are usually way above the consumer T3 connections; with gigabyte level bandwidths not uncommon with some Linux servers.

They will also provide you with custom software and a team to support the server, in case of any difficulties and issues with your web site. If you are looking for performance and piece of mind, the general advice is to go for a Windows based or Linux dedicated server. With so many issues already reported with shared servers, you know that this is the direction you need to provide your website with the resources that it needs. So know your tech speak and be aware of emerging technologies in web hosting, and make the right choice.

It is easy to fool a novice business associate by giving him disk space and bandwidth that he does not really need. Depending on the type of website you own, you must be able to precisely calculate the amount of disk space and bandwidth you need for web hosting. Here are few tips to estimate the needs carefully. Read on to find out about them.

Size of the Website

The size of the website is important to ascertain the amount of disk space needed for hosting the website. This size depends on text, graphic images, animation, and flash. Text uses very little space. But contrary to this, images can take up huge chunks of space.

Although animations, jazzy flash, or heavy graphic files can be really interesting to watch, it could kill the interest of the users as well. How? By taking a lot of time to load. Many users are still using slow Internet connectivity. Their computer may also not support heavy animated files as well. Why not select simple images to keep your webpage within 50-60 KB? An average page should not be more than 30 KB.

Amount of Disk Space

Now that you have decided on the size of the website - which is roughly 30-60 KB, select the amount of space you need in the computer to host your website. Keep this limit to 10 MB. Surveys suggest that this limit is fair enough to accommodate any load the website might get.

You might consider altering this limit a bit if you have a busy forum to maintain. If not, you know the amount to keep.

Number of Visitors

Estimating the number of visitors to your website is very important to select the amount of bandwidth you need to maintain your website. For instance, if you are aiming at 20,000 visitors per month for your website, which has an average of 30 KB data per page, go for 1.5 GB bandwidth strength.

So, next time your web hosting provider offers a 5 GB bandwidth for a similar website, you know the answer. Also, 20,000 hit rates are quite hypothetical. Usually, hit rate for an average website is quite less.

Wrapping Up

In short, unnecessary disk space and bandwidth would cost you money and effort. Estimate your needs properly and seek those web hosting firms who offer upgrades as well. Unless you are offering a popular movie songs and clippings, you don’t really need mega space and bandwidth.

Email hosting is one of the most important aspects of online business because it is the point of contact for you to communicate with any satellite organisations and most importantly your consumers and clients. It is integral to the corporate connect culture that has invaded the internet and because of this, more and more providers are cropping up on the internet. With email and other forms of virtual communication, the Internet has made the market place truly borderless and nation less - you are able to stretch your business potential to the ends of the earth at a fraction of the cost.

At a recent survey done online, 90% of all business communication all over the world is now done through email. But here comes the dilemma; with so many to choose from, which ones do you go for and what are the aspects that you should look out for? Firstly, for those who are contemplating hosting email in house; it can be quite an expensive solution because the amount of equipment and customisation of the office space that you have to do is quite staggering. For one, you need to bring in additional equipment like servers, high memory capacity drives and an additional computer.

You would also need to change to a high speed modem and install expensive firewall and security software to that the internal office email network does not get attacked by viruses. These include anti adware software, spam blockers and corporate level anti virus software. If you are a large corporation, then the cost might be negligible, but if your operations range from the small to the medium, then you need to consider the alternative, which is to adopt an email hosting service from a provider who has already all the necessary equipments and software in place. Looking at the arena of email hosting on the web; there are several aspects you should look out for. For one, the provider should be able to furnish your business with an almost unlimited number of email names, email addresses that are 100% customisable.

The features that they should provide include security features like spam blocking software, a reliable firewall and a host of options for you to secure your precious corporate information. There should also be a 24 technical support division that can attend to your case, and the best thing would be to have a technician that can even come onsite if the problem is dire (Of course this only works when the email provider is in the same country as you are, and most likely, this will be the case). They should also be able to provide you with something called off site back ups, which is a web mail options which copies and archives all the emails running through the server, which means in the event of a global crash of all systems, there will be a backup storage for you to refer to. With these features, you can get the right email hosting for your business.

I know when you are first starting out on the website you might think that having a free domain name may sound get but it it? I am not talking about the one you get when you pay for hosting I mean the one you get from free hosting services. There can be some big disadvantages for using free domains as your web address. Here are some reasons you may not want a free domain name from a free host service.

One of the biggest problems with free domains is that they make you look unprofessional. When you get a domain from free hosting services they make you use their front end subdomain. For instance, your website name will look like “yoursite.theirname.com”. With that kind of domain name you are making it obvious to everyone that you are using a free service. Your visitors may lose confidence in your abilities. Plus, it doesn’t look good on a business card. These types of domain names are for just creating a practice site of one for fun.

The other reason why you do not want a free domain name is because you will not be able to sell your domain if your website begins to gain traffic. You will be stuck with that domain because they will own it not you. You will end up having to divert traffic from that site to your new site. Oh, and about traffic, you must have a certain amount of traffic going to that site or they will cancel your service. Since most will run ads on your site to make up for giving your a free service they will be more that happy to give your server space to someone else.

Free hosting services usually make you join their forums. You will have to log on and contribute to their forum at least once a week or your service will be cancelled. Unless you like forums you will have no choice if you website takes off.

You need a top level domain (TLD) like “www.yoursite.com” so you will have full control over it. You look more professional, you can sell your domain for a profit and you will not have to worry about being cancelled, unless you don’t pay your bill. But don’t worry about that because web hosting is much cheaper these days.

So if you are planning to have a serious business website then please do not rely on free web hosting or free domain name from these services. You can play around with them first to get the hang of thing then get yourself a (TLD) when you are ready for serious business.

A host reseller specialises in the buying and selling of host names and domain named accounts on the internet. Host reselling has been a viable option to gain cheap domain names for an online business or for even casual reasons. When you do purchase a hosting reseller account, you will have access to many cheap and distinctive domain names and you will be able to acquire and use them almost immediately.

Many individuals and corporations have been touting the use of host reseller accounts and there are two main reasons for this. One of the reasons is to of course save, and sometimes you can save a lot of money. When you want to get a domain name register or get an account with a web domain provider, it will be costly. Think about it as comparing the price of a second hand car to a brand new model. They both drive the same, they both perform the same and pretty much they are the same thing, with the second hand car being much, much cheaper of course. Then there is the profit side of the money issue, which is that you can actually make some money from host reselling. How you do this comes from purchasing an already existing account with a host reseller, usually for a small fee and with that, you can extend your hosting (newly gained) to other people looking to host their very own websites and you can charge a small fee. You do not need to acquire your own server and you certainly do not need to invest in other more expensive equipment or software.

Another way you can make money is if you are in the business of buying and selling on the internet, where you should and must be using several different websites that handle either a range of products or many different products from many different categories. You need to be able to micromanage and create these websites as markers and backchannels to route sales and create volume. You can even use these multiple sites to post interesting and engaging content and make money from either pay per click revenue with other internet advertisers. With a host reseller account, you can do all these things and much, much more. The possibilities are really endless with a host reseller account.

The interests and categories that can fall under the host reseller is almost as wide as the amount of content on the internet itself. If you are looking to just build a hobby website or if you are looking to extend your business reach into the digital arena with as many websites and satellites as possible, then getting a host reseller account could be the solution that you are looking for. They are many of these packages that are available online and a simple search on a popular search engine will reap you many returns on information. Soon, you will be able to enjoy the benefits of a host reseller account.

Dedicated server leasing is an excellent option for those individuals or businesses who have a specific need to implement a highly customized server hosting solution. Should you go with dedicated server leasing? Or will a shared server account suffice for you? The answer depends on what your specific needs are.

Before you make the determination whether to opt to go with dedicated server leasing versus using a shared server hosting account, you should evaluate your needs against this checklist below:

1. Do you require root / administrator access to a machine in order to install custom software?
2. Will you be hosting other customers or users on the system and need to maintain full administrative control over the machine?
3. Do your disk space requirements exceed the limits imposed by most hosting service providers?
4. Do you anticipate extremely high bandwidth, such as streaming media content, very large and very frequent downloads, or hundreds of thousands or millions of users hits per day, week, or month?
5. Do you have a highly customized solution that would adversely impact the availability or performance capacity of other customer accounts who may be sharing the same shared server host with you?
6. Do you have highly secure information and need to minimize the risk of exposing your data to becoming compromised by others who may be accessing the same system?
7. Are you relying on the dedicated server for disaster recovery, business continuity, high availlability, or data back up purposes?

If any of the above 7 situations apply to you, then without a doubt, dedicated server leasing at a reputable data center makes sense for you.