Web Hosting Information

Your Web Hosting Company Are You Just A Number? July 30, 2008

By now I’m sure you know how important your choice of web hosting company is to your business. But just in case you don’t, let’s review. At first glance, cheap web hosting may seem like a pretty good deal. Who doesn’t want to save money? However, there are some areas in which you, as an online business owner, just can’t afford to cut corners. Would you put water in the gas tank of your car just to save money? Choose a cheap web hosting company and you are doing exactly that. While you can cut corners in other areas of your business, your web hosting company is not where you want to do this, if only for one simple reason: with free or cheap web hosting companies, you are little more than a number, just another website.

Let’s take a look at how cheap or free web hosting companies make their money and how they do business. First, how can they offer such cheap prices? Or even free web hosting? There is only one answer: volume. They host thousands of websites, some smaller, some larger than yours. Do you think that in hosting thousands of websites, they can give you the personalized service that you deserve? Let me answer that one for you: they simply cannot. Why? Because the number of sites hosted, coupled with the low pricing simply makes it an infeasible business practice. Practically speaking, from a business standpoint, they cannot do this. It would not make sense to their bottom line. Second, large web hosting companies generally run lean and mean. That is, in business 101, they do more with less. They are not going to provide more people to service more customers when they can do the same job with less. Granted, customer service will suffer. But to them, this is a tradeoff that they make up for with volume.

Now let’s look at things from your point of view (an online business owner). You already know that time is money. You have probably already figured out that, sadly, time is not on your side. Thus, every time your site is down you are losing money. Even 5 minutes is too long for your site to be inaccessible to visitors (potential customers). Online business runs 24/7. Does your web hosting company understand that? More importantly, when you have a problem, is your business just another website to them? Or will they take personal ownership of the problem and solve it as soon as possible? What about follow up? Are you just another website in the heap? Or will they follow up with you to make sure that you are a satisfied customer and your site is running smoothly? Better yet, will they follow up personally, via phone call? Or will they just send an email - an automated one at that?

Many Internet business owners make the mistake of choosing a cheap web hosting company, thinking that it will help save them money. Often, it costs them more in the long run in the form of downtime, time spent waiting for answers from the hosting company and lost customers. Below are 6 tips that should tell you if you are just another website to your web hosting company:

* Time - Does your web hosting company have an open door policy? If you have a question, Will they have the answer or will they refer you to their Help Page URL? As an online business owner, there is nothing more frustrating than calling the web hosting company for help and then being told to go to a URL for help. If your web hosting company does this to you, then you are just a number to them.

* Accessibility - Is your web hosting company answering the phone promptly? When they do, who is it? Sales? This is a big tip-off. A web hosting company that really knows you and cares about your business won’t automatically try to sell you something and they won’t hide behind an answering machine or salesperson. A cheap web hosting company definitely won’t know you by name; they will know you by the domain that you have with them.

* Business Knowledge - Does your web hosting company know what your needs are as a website owner? Do they care? Are they hiring teenagers from the local high school to answer the phones (who can’t really help you)? Does your web hosting company have Internet Marketing experience? If you are with a cheap web hosting company, the answer is no, because they do their business by volume and can’t be focused on those kinds of issues. Kind of ironic, don’t you think, given the fact that you have a website in the first place due to the Internet?

* Advertising/Sales Tactics - As your business grows, how many services is your web hosting company trying to sell you? How many emails do they send you trying to get you to upgrade, pay upfront, etc, etc.? Better yet, how do they make their sales? I’ll tell you how: aggressive advertising and sales tactics. For a cheap web hosting company, it’s the only way, because it is all about the numbers. And you are one of them.

* Relationship-Driven - Does your web hosting company want a relationship with you or with your money? I bet by now you can guess the answer. The fact is, cheap web hosting companies make profits by increasing sales. If one customer leaves, so be it, because they have the volume to make that up. They really don’t have the time, resources or the inclination to really make sure they have a satisfied, long-term client in you.

* Patience - Lots of Internet business owners don’t know the ins and outs of web hosting. That’s understandable. When you talk to the sales department of your web hosting company do they use Plain English or technospeak that you don’t understand? Do they have the patience to explain everything to you? Or do they automatically assume that you should know and become more impatient the more questions you ask? To put is bluntly, do they make you feel stupid or dumb? If you are trying to give the web hosting company your business and they are making you feel stupid for asking questions, they may as well be saying Next! Why would they do this? Because your business is just another website to them.

Generally, a business web hosting company that gives you personalized service, has answers to your questions (or ways of getting those answers) will serve your online business better. Having tons of options is fine, but even better is the peace of mind that comes with knowing that to your web hosting company, your business and its success is priority one.

Greg Cesar gets results. Find out how hundreds of webmasters benefit from Greg’s web hosting and internet marketing knowledge by visiting his Business Web Hosting website.

Greg Cesar is a successful Internet marketer, web designer and web hosting provider with over 10 years’ experience. He specializes in providing innovative web hosting and internet marketing services that help business owners make more money online. To improve your online business immediately and work with someone who understands what it takes to make real money online, visit http://www.hostpartnerplus.com

Criteria Of Choosing An Ideal Web Hosting Company July 28, 2008

Before we talk about what it takes to be a cheap and good quality web host, lets get to the fundamental first.

What is a Web Host?
A web host is a service provider that places your web site on a computer which is connected to the internet. The term for this computer is called a server.

A web hosting provider will typically have a fast connection to the Internet and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide web.

With a well-managed web host, you can free yourself from worrying the up-keep of complicated server technology and proper technical maintenance. Thats the whole purpose of the web hosting companies. You should leave the technical work to web hosting professional while you focus on your own internet business.

Lets begin…

Feature Offered
The features that web hosting companies are offering are getting quite standard nowadays.

The followings are some of the common features you’ll see in most web hosting plans:

• Control Panel
  Control Panel is an interface where you can access your site on the web server, allowing you to set-up and subsequently update and customize your web site. Though cPanel is by far the most popular control panel, some hosting providers customize their own so that they can up-grade and expand it at will.
• Diskspace
  A vast majority of sites that don’t have tons of graphics, sound and video clips or downloadable files easily fit in 50 MB of disk space. You should always leave yourself some room for growth or check if the host has a bigger plan in case you need to upgrade.
• Bandwidth
  Bandwidth is the amount of data transmitted or received through a unit of time. In web hosting, bandwidth is consumed when visitors make requests for files on your web site and download them to their personal computers.
• Email Account
  With POP3 email accounts you can check email from Outlook, Netscape Mail, Eudora or any other Email software.
• Scripting language
  As all our top 10 listings are using Unix and Linux platform, php, perl and CGI are the languages we are talking about here. It is best to choose a host that supports the latest version to maximize the latest web technologies for the fee that you pay.
• Database
  If your web site is going to store a lot of data that should be dynamically accessible (like user accounts, stock prices, maps, Interactive news, message boards and forum etc.), you’ll need to look for an account that offers a database. MySQL is a powerful and most popular database program that runs on the Linux operation system. It is able to handle million of entries all at once. Its flexibility and speed allow you to also store logs and pictures. MySQL is designed to scale well under heavy traffic conditions and is ideal for database-intensive or e-commerce-enabled Web sites.

Customer Service/Support
No matter if you are an expert or a novice in web hosting, you need a web host with good customer support system. What is the criteria of an excellent customer support? Let us explain.

• How big is the knowledge base?
  This is particularly important for those who want to search for quick answer without seeking direct assistance from customer support staff. Due to the huge database, normally its searchable. Some web hosting providers will even make your life easier by making a video tutorial guiding you step by step in setting up your new account. Very useful for beginner.

• Responsive customer service staff.
  If you are too lazy to find the answer out of a big pool of database, get the direct answer from someone who knows it. Direct customer support comes in a few forms.
  a. Email support

  b. Phone support: Normally, sales and technical support uses separate phone line. A good phone support staff knows what your problem is and answers with relevance.

  c.Web Host like Lunarpages and Globat even have live chat support. However, its not how many support channels that are available but how responsive it is of the staff. You can find out the hosting reviews and ratings of each of our Top 10 Cheap Web Host.

Price to Disk Space / Price to Bandwidth Ratio
Are you paying too much for your Web Hosting Plan?
Having done the research on hundreds of web hosting companies, in general, weve come to this conclusion: the more disk space and bandwidth you are getting, the more expensive is the monthly price.

To help you understand which price is competitive enough for you to take up the offer, we have categorized 5 different price range. For each price range, a score of maximum of 10 is assigned. To understand the concept behind this, please refer to the details here.

Popularity
A web host might have the best feature offered, unbeatable customer support and reliability in place but without an effective marketing plan, it will go bust too. Lets face it. If a web hosting provider does not have sufficient members and steady growth of new members, its very difficult to survive in this highly competitive industry.

We judge the popularity of a particular web hosting provider by looking at the number of awards won, the reviews of other websites and the Alexa traffic ranking.

All the hosting providers listed on our Top 10 Cheap Web Hosting Directory are among the top 40,000 most visited websites in the world.

Reliability, Speed and Uptime Guarantee
Nothing can hurt you more than this: your visitors come to your web site only to find that its not accessible. You lose credibility and possibly even a sale. If your web host does not guarantee at least a 99% uptime, leave the web host now!

To ensure maximum uptime, installation of redundant back-up systems is essential. Each web host has their own management systems to minimize downtime. Redundant means that if any of the Internet connections get interrupted, the alternate Internet connection will take over.

We use Alertra software to monitor the uptime of each of our top 10 web hosts.

As for speed, even though routing, web server set up and local area networks play a part in determining the speed of a site, the main concern of how fast your site is depends very much on the types of network connections.

Many hosting providers still connect to the Internet through T1, or T3 connections. This is not the case for our top 10 hosts- they are using OC (Optical Carrier) lines.

A T1 line will offer data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbps (megabits per second), while a T3 line can supply data transfer rates of 43Mbps. OC-1 refers to a circuit that transmits 51.85Mbps. Higher levels are multiples of that speed. Ultra-High Speed OC3 and OC12 lines offers 155Mbps and 622Mbps respectively. Some hosting providers have connections to major internet backbones at the speed of OC48 (2488Mbps) and OC96 (4976Mbps).

Top 10 Cheap Web Hosting Directory - Provides extensive review of top 10 web hosting providers.

Website Hosting Directory - Directory of reliable web hosting services and resources.

Domain Web Hosting Checker - Find the right web hosting solution for you.

How To Transfer Your Web Site To A New Web Hosting Service? July 25, 2008

There are various reasons why an online business owner like you has decided to switch to a new web hosting providers. Your old web hosting provider probably has very poor technical support, or their web server is always down, or may be your old web hosting provider cannot meet your hosting requirements anymore or you could have discovered a cheaper web hosting serviceand etc. Regardless of the reasons, now you have found a new web hosting service and you need to transfer your website from your current web host to the new web host. Below is the step-by-step guide that you can follow in order to achieve a painless and error free of moving to a new web hosting provider.

Transfer Schedule
Ideally, you should plan the transfer one month before you terminate your old web hosting plan in order to have sufficient time to perform a smooth transfer. Doing the transfer in less than one month time frame will put your website in risk of inaccessible.

New web hosting service registration
Now, sign-up your new web hosting service once you have decided the termination date mentioned above. Depending on your new web hosting provider, your new web hosting account usually will be set up within 24 hours.

Files Backup
While waiting for your new web hosting account to be created, it is time to backup all your web files on the old web hosting provider. In most cases, you already have all the files of your website on your local computer. However, it is still a good idea to backup all your files from the old web server. In addition to the normal HTML files, you may need to backup any script files, databases files, and even server logs files if it is necessary. You should create a directory structure that is similar to the directory structure on your web server and download the files into the respective directory.

Files uploading
Once you are notified that your new web hosting account has been created, you will receive a notification email from your new web hosting provider. In that email, it contains all the information required to set up website, this including the FTP server information. With that FTP information, you can now FTP to your new web hosting server and upload all your files. You should start by first creating the directory structures on the web server, and then upload all the files to the respective directory.

It is the time to install any script files or databases if there are used in your website. Likewise, it is a good time to set up all the email accounts through the administration panel.

Once you have finished uploading all the files and installed the script files or databases, you can now use the temporary URL to test your site. The temporary URL can be found in the notification email from your new web hosting provider. The temporary URL could be in the following format: http://viola.lunarpages.com/~your-webaccountname

Testing
Using the temporary URL directory, you can now test your web site online. Due to the fact that different web hosting server may require different server environment to execute. Therefore, you need to verify all the scripts (such as CGI, Perl) are working accordingly. In addition, you should test all the hyperlinks in the normal web pages if possible to ensure no broken links. While you are testing through the temporary URL directory, your website hosted on the old web hosting provider is continue operating.

Transfer domain name
Once you have finished testing your new website on the temporary URL and verified it is working perfectly. The next step is to contact your current domain name registrar (i.e. the company where you register your domain name) to change the old DNS (Domain Name Server) to point to the new DNS of your new web hosting provider. Usually, the DNS information is sent to you through email after you register successful with the new web hosting provider. Alternatively, you will be able to find the DNS information from the website of your new hosting provider.

Domain name servers control how a domain name is resolved. Typically, the domain name servers are in following format:

NS1.YOUR-NEW-WEB-HOSTING.COM

NS2.YOUR-NEW-WEB-HOSTING.COM

Some domain name registrar requires the IP addresses of the DNS. In this case you have to provide the IP addresses of your new DNS. For example:

NS1: 216.193.194.212

NS2: 216.193.207.106

Typically, it will take about 24-72 hours to get the DNS record to change and propagate through all the WHOIS servers. You can use Whois tools on the Internet such as whois.com to monitor the status of the DNS transfer. Once the transfer is completed, you will notice the change to your new DNS. Alternatively, you can make a minor modification to your home page (for example, adding a new image or symbol) and upload to the new web hosting server. When you access your home page through the normal domain name (www.your-website.com) and you notice the new home page, then you are sure that the DNS has been transferred successfully.

Final Testing
Now, your website on the new web hosting provider is officially transferred and online. You should repeat all the tests to ensure it is fully functional. Once you are confirmed the new website is working correctly, you can go ahead to terminate your old web hosting account.

Andrew is the owner of Cheap Web Hosting, a website that provide complete and detail reviews on low cost web hosting providers. You can visit his website at: http://www.lowest-price-web-hosting.com/

How To Choose A Right Web Hosting Service?

Indeed, choosing a right web hosting service for your website is not an easy task especially when there are thousands of web hosting providers all offering almost identical web hosting packages. Therefore, it is important to know few major considerations even before you start your web hosting search. Below are three major criteria for web host seeker:

Web hosting features requirement

This is probably the most important consideration to start finding a host for your site. You need to decide the technical requirements for your website, this including:

a) Server platform and hardware requirements
If you plan to set up a website that uses programming environments such as Active Server Pages (ASP), Visual Basic scripts, Cold Fusion or Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL database, in this case, you will need to find a web hosting service that supports Windows platform such as Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers.

Likewise, if you plan to use programming languages such as Perl, CGI, SSI, PHP or mySQL database, then any web hosting plans that support Unix/Linux platform should be sufficient to meet your hosting requirements. Once you have these server platform and hardware requirements in mind, you can decide the best web hosting plans for your need. For more information, you can read How to select a web server and server platform?

b) Disk space & Bandwidth requirement
Here is another technical requirement that you need to consider before selecting a web hosting plan, i.e. disk space and bandwidth. If you intend to publish a website that does not have a lot of contents (meaning, web pages), then the disk space requirement may not be a big concern to you. In general, a disk space with 200MB to 500MB should be enough to meet your hosting requirement. In contrast, if you plan to host a website with enormous amount of graphic pictures, mp3 or video files, then you should consider a web hosting plan that provide huge disk space, for example, 500 MB to 1,000 MB.

Similarly, the bandwidth requirement will depend on your site traffic estimation. Obviously, a website that expect to attract high traffic will consume the monthly bandwidth allowance very fast. If so, you will need to find one web hosting service that offer huge bandwidth with 40 GB to 100 GB per month. Depending upon your website requirement, choosing a web hosting service that provide sufficient amount of disk space and bandwidth is crucial consideration to prevent paying extra costs in the future should you overuse the monthly disk space and bandwidth allowance.

c) Other hosting features
While the above requirements are utmost important, there are other hosting features that you have to consider too. Can web hosting provider support video clips on your website, if you have? Is the web hosting service compatible with Dreamweaver or FrontPage web authoring tool? Do you plan to set up a virtual store online? Can the host support the e-commerce features without adding extra cost to your monthly payments? On top of that, you may also want to find out the number of email accounts provided, number of FTP accounts, web statistic software (analyze your web traffic), type of control panel supported (manage your web hosting account), database and scripting languages supported and etc.

Reliability and scalability

A first-class web hosting provider offers reliable server uptime and fast Internet connection. You should only choose a web hosting service that guarantee at least 99% server uptime with high-speed Internet backbones using at least OC3 (Optical Carrier) lines (155 Megabits per second) or above instead of T1 or T3 lines. A reliable web hosting provider usually invests heavily on their data center infrastructure with high performance servers, high speed multiple backbones providers with fail-over redundancy, backup power generators and firewall software protection in place to ensure they meet the uptime guarantee specified in the terms of service.

Similarly, you should choose a web hosting service with hardware facilities that designed for scalability, so that they can grow with your business. For example, if you need to increase more disk space, bandwidth or number of mySQL databases, you should be able to upgrade as needed without any problems.

Customer service and support

The last major consideration in choosing a web hosting service is to find a web hosting providers that offers excellent customer service and support. You should always search for a web hosting provider that offers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week technical support that fielded with highly experience technicians, so that any web hosting problems will be resolved within a reasonable amount of time. You may also want to consider to test how responsive is their customer support by sending few inquiry emails to the web hosting provider. In general, any response in less than 24 hours is considered acceptable. It is a sign of poor customer support if they take more than one day to response.

In addition, a web hosting provider with excellent support should also provide multiple support channels, such as toll-free phone support, 24/7 email support, live chat, online knowledgebase, Interactive flash tutorials and FAQ.

Above are few major considerations before you choose your web hosting service. In addition, how long has the web hosting provider in business and the number of customers that they currently have are also a good indication of the quality of their hosting products as well as the stability of the company. Even though cost of the web hosting service is also important but it should not be your major consideration. Because the price of a web hosting service has been declining over the years due to competition, as a result, the price of most of the web hosting services offering quality hosting features has been converging to less than US$10 per month. If you can’t afford less than $10 per month, you probably isn’t in the online business for the long haul. Therefore, price should not be a major deciding factor.

On the other hand, it is more important to ensure the web hosting service that you choose is able to meet your website hosting requirements, guarantee your website is always accessible with satisfying speed, provide scalability to grow and expand your website as well as offer excellent customer supports. Depending on your web hosting requirement, you can take advantage of our site, Cheap Web Hosting Review to find the recommended web hosting services that can match the three major criteria above. Good luck to your search.

Andrew is the owner of Web Hosting Services, a website that provides complete and detail reviews on web hosting services. You can visit his website at:http://www.lowest-price-web-hosting.com/

Pros And Cons Of Shared Hosting July 7, 2008

There are a lot of various types of web site hosting. They can be classified by different indexes.

There is Paid and Free web hosting; Linux/Unix-based and Windows-based (and other but they are no that popular); shared, dedicated and VPS. Every hosting type has its own advantages and disadvantages.

The key aim of this article is to acquaint you with main merits and drawbacks of shared hosting.

First of all we must give a definition of the term shared hosting. So, what is shared hosting?

Shared hosting is such kind of providing space for web sites on the hoster’s server when you share this server with other customers’ web sites. All web sites use the same software and operating system. But unlike free web hosting which has the same conditions, with shared web hosting you have much more benefits.

Shared web hosting can be divided into two subtypes:

Free Shared Hosting is the best choice for trying some new ideas and not paying for hosting. This type of web site hosting provides you with everything necessary for floating your site. Of course you should not expect the best conditions for your site. Bandwidth and Disk Space is limited. This type of shared hosting may not ensure you with MySQL, PHP support. Web statistics is also poorly provided

Paid Shared Hosting provides such necessary features, as multiply e-mail, MySQl, PHP are supported. You may use it if you want to host small business web site, intermediate or large professional site but don’t need the whole server’s space.Using shared hosting you get a good possibility to host your site on a powerful, well administrated server at a low monthly cost.

Shared hosting is in first-time webmasters’ great demand, ’cause it can provide reliable web presence without having special technical skills.

So now we can pick out pros and cons of shared hosting:

Pros

• Low cost
• Good server administration
• Multiply e-mail, MySQL, PHP support
• You don’t need some unique knowledge in web site and server administration

Cons

• Low security level
• Resource limitation -everybody uses the same memory, CPU and HardDrive.
• You can use only the software which is provided with your hosting company, and correspondingly you can’t install your own.
• Some available ports and connections can be limited because of security policy.

The main feature of shared hosting is that you don’t need to worry about about possible server problems. Your hosting company’s support service is to fix all troubles. So, when choosing shared hosting you must carefully look at company support’s quality, the better quality of support - the better conditions for your site.

With shared hosting you can also place several sites in the neighbour parts of the server.

Now when you are acquainted with all special features of shared hosting you can decide whether this type of hosting is appropriate to your needs and requirements.

More hosting articles you can also find here http://www.web-site-hosting-reviews.com, http://www.web-hosting-review.net and http://www.cheap-web-hosting-directory.com.

Olga Elizarova is a webmaster and articles editor of hosting reviews sites http://www.web-site-hosting-reviews.com and http://www.web-hosting-review.net.

Reseller Web Hosting Explained

Reseller web hosting is a web hosting service that re-bundles services available from real hosts or primary providers. Reseller web hosting could be an individual or small business that makes use of the bandwidth and web servers of a higher tier provider or primary host and resells the same to the customers by offering value added services like web designing, domain registration and web programming.

Most real hosting companies allow reseller web hosting in order to boost their sales. Recently, a significant number of web hosting businesses have infiltrated the internet with an eye on the ever-growing number of people who are jumping online. In order to remain competitive, hosting companies look for ways to market their services to a greater number of people rather than offering their services individually. This leads to the business of reseller web hosting accounts. In reseller web hosting, real hosts are able to generate bulk businesses and delegate individual clients to reseller servers. In turn, reseller web hosting businesses look after some individual clients needs. This is a win-win situation for both, since real hosts will have an intermediary in the form of reseller web hosting to individual customers without having to attend to them one by one. The reseller is also able to put up a business and earn income without having to shell out capital outlays. Although in some instances they do compete with each other for a fair share of the web hosting market, the real hosts can still benefit from this set-up considering they do charge a certain amount from resellers.

The services offered by a reseller web hosting service do not really differ from a real host. As a matter of fact, reseller web hosting offers more features to the customers. Due to the added value services, reseller web hosting can offer web design and programming services to each customer that are often times not possible from real hosts. Real hosts tend to focus on bulk accounts and corporate clients. Reseller web hosting offers value added services to customers in order to maintain a competitive edge against bigger web hosting services.

Reseller web hosting is also better able to establish friendly relationship with their customers that go beyond the contract terms. This is the secret for those successful reseller web-hosting services. They fill the need that bigger hosting servers cannot provide. Those who want to start a reseller web hosting business are advised to look for a real host, such as Hostgator or SpeedHostingZ.com. It is very easy to obtain a reseller account from a real host these days.

If you need simple hosting services for your web site and you prefer to have personal attention from the web host for design and programming then a reseller web hosting account is highly recommended. However, if you have a business website that requires complex e-commerce solutions, have a very large number of customers accessing your web site or you have a large number of websites to be hosted, a reseller hosting would probably not suffice. This is particularly true for e-businesses. For this, you need a real host provider for your web site.

For a complete set of web hosting resources for both home and business, please visit http://helpfulwebhosting.com

Cheap Web Hosting How To Select The Right Web Hosting Provider

So, what is cheap web hosting?

Finding a quality service provider that is cheap is a tedious task. For some users, the one big downside of having an unmanaged dedicated host is that you must be your own server administrator.

These hosting services are with cheap rates. So,what things that should be keep in mind while looking for cheap web hosting services?

a. First, check companys background and verify that whether the hosting company is reputable or not. Be sure the hosting service provider offers as much disk space as you want.

b. Disk Space Consideration & Features

How much hosting disk space your site takes in order to compare service provider’s plans. Most people on shared servers will not have access to a command line to be able to use the chmod command. Make sure that you know your needs before you start looking for your web host. In general, a disk space with 500 MB to 1000 MB should be enough to meet your hosting requirement.

c. Other Services to Consider

Even an cheap web-hosting provider can offer domain registration or doamin renewal as part of their hosting package. Some, will actually register your good domain in their name. This way, they locked you into service with them as switching web hosting providers now means losing your domain name. Be carefull. A host that supports databases is normally a must have feature

d. Traffic Generation

If you found the traffic to your site has increased over the specified bandwidth limit, you should select a higher hosting plan. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data (pages, files) served from your website to your customers, if your website will be subject to high traffic, you will need to take the amount of bandwidth the host provides.

Before you decide on a web hosting plan, be sure to check this:

- What is the monthly data transfer/bandwidth allowed?

- Are you able to upgrade/add on your bandwidth?

- Will you be charged if your website exceeds its limit?

Anyway, look for ones with good reputations or just email them and compare their quickly results from different places. The question you should ask an existing customer is; how reliable is the host?.

No Contact Information: If you cant find on their website at least one way email address, query ticket, phone number get in touch with the hosting provider you are considering, stop considering them. Also send technical support an email to test how long it takes to receive a response. You should always search for a web hosting provider that offers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week technical support

Always choose a hosting provider that meets your expectations and with whom you feel comfortable with. Does your web hosting provider offer a guarantee of discounts for each hour that your Web site is down from their servers. Ask as many questions as you can, see how the different hosts differ in their answers. But if you really have a serious website, and want to run a successful business you cannot do it without using a dedicated server.

David Hay, editor for http://www.hostcube.co.uk Lots of people get poor web hosting Be smart - Make the Right Choice. Find TOP quality cheap web hosting providers through strict selection process that’ll save you hours to do the research. Submit press release: http://www.media-press-release.com

Did You Know That The Type Of Website You Have Could Decide Your Web Hosting Company?

The type of web site you have or intend to build will decide very much what web hosting company you end up choosing. The reason for this is that the level of storage, bandwidth, and other services differs greatly amongst all the various web hosting companies available.

If you are going to have a simple web site with only a few pages and very little graphics then you will be able to get by with a web host that offers entry level hosting packages. Bear in mind that even though there may be free services out there for a few dollars a month you are better off with your own hosting without their required advertising on your site.

Now on the other side of the coin, if you are going to have a web site that is more of an e-commerce or business web site or have one that hosts streaming music or video then you will want one that will allow much more features and scripts. The company will need to provide database support and offer applications such as ASP,PHP, and Java. It is also good for a web hosting company to have preinstalled scripts like those for forums or content management systems like Joomla or Wordpress. I personally like the web hosts who offer Cpanel with Fantastico just for the ease of use.

If you intend to collect payments on your website then you are going to want to be sure to have SSL with at least 128 bit encryption for secure online purchases. You may also want to go with a supported gateway for your online shopping cart so that credit cards can be processed in real time using the larger processing entities such as Verisign or Paypal.

If you have a website or blog that requires a database then you will absolutely need a web host that offers this with scripting such as SQL so that the web pages can be read to gain access to the particular database and display the content.

The amount of space you will need plays a huge part on determining the web host you ultimately choose and this is why web design is such a huge factor. As a general rule of thumb, the average web page will need less than 1MB so if you have a 100 page site then 100 MB of space will be more than sufficient. However, the more pictures, video, or audio you add into the equation the more disk space you will need.

Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. Find more information on low cost web hosting at http://www.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com

Host Wars! The Battle Of Space (Disk Space) July 6, 2008

Just recently, I received an email from one of the twenty hosting companies that I’m affiliated with and before I even opened it I knew what it was going to say. Pretty much the same thing that the last five emails from other hosting companies have said. Dear Affiliate, we’re happy to announce that we’ve included more disk space to our basic hosting plans which now offer over 20,000 Mb (mega-bytes) of disk/storage space to your customers. And the Hosting companies battle on!

Now don’t get me wrong, from a marketing and advertising viewpoint, offering my customer 20,000 Mb of disk space instead of 5 or 10 thousand is something that just sweetens the pot. Why not have extra space? Sometimes more is better. But unless you’re the only person on an island with an internet connection and a hosting account thats going to be used by a small third world nation, or unless you’re Ebay (TM), I don’t see where the average company, even with a website that has 100 or more pages with many graphics, is even going to come close to using 20,000 Mb of disk/storage space per month.

My modestly small website wbwebhosts dot com has twelve pages that get a total of around 200 page hits a day. Last time I checked I was averaging 2 Mb of disk/storage usage per month. Naturally, I’m sure that if everybody who was hosted with a certain company was somehow able to use 20,000 Mb of disk each month, the hosting company would run out of server space.

But thats OK though! Advertising all that storage space is a Hook to lure people in. Nothing wrong with that. As I said above it’s better to have too much storage space then not enough. But look for other things that the company offers they may set them apart from other web hosting services. Is the set-up and Domain free? Where are there servers located? C-panel control (very easy control panel for beginners)? Price per month? Transfer (monthly traffic allowed)?

Well the Host wars will continue! Maybe by this time next year they’ll be offering 30,000 Mb to attract new customers. To most unsuspecting people this will seem like a great deal and will be happy and feel lucky that they have found such a hosting company. By offering more disk/storage space, the hosting companies will lure more customers and affiliates, affiliates in turn will gain more customers and the customers will be happy with the excess of space. Oh well, as long as everybody is happy…..

Compare top 15 Web Hosting Companies! Hosting Plans Starting at $3.95/ Month http://www.wbwebhosts.com/cheap-hosting-for-every-need-http

Affordable Web Hosting Can Be Found Quickly And Easily July 3, 2008

Web sites are the way to market for just about everything these days, because when most people are in need of something they search the Internet first. Most of us take them for granted, but if you are looking for quality web hosting you may find it a bit more difficult. Web hosting services are everywhere, but finding one that is just right for you may take a little bit of work. Asking friends and family who they use for their web hosting is a great idea because you’ll get a real idea of what certain providers are capable of and who may be able to meet your needs. To determine what web hosting service for you can be done if you just sit down and think about what you need.

Affordability

One of things you’ll want to consider when choosing a web hosting provider is affordability. You may have a simple site that doesn’t require much, so hosting should be very affordable. Even if you do need something more involved such as ecommerce web hosting, you’d be surprised how affordable the services really can be. Web hosting can cost as little as $5.00 a month but generally ranges from $10 and up, but that is still very affordable! Five or ten dollars a month isn’t much when you are dealing with a great web host that will keep your website accessible to your clients and potential clients at all times.

Reliability

There are some really cheap web hosting solutions out there that will host your website, some of the time. You want a web host that will keep you online at least 99% of the time. If your website isn’t online and reliable you’ll find it hard to do business. Be sure and ask about the uptime of a specific web hosting provider before spending one dime, because the old adage that says if it seems too good to be true, it probably is applies to web hosting as well.

Features

When you look at affordable web hosting providers you’ll also want to see what sort of features are offered. How many megabytes of disk space will you be given? How many POP3 email accounts? Is data transfer limited? And, how many names can you host with this one account? These are all important questions that you need to ask when looking at any one affordable web hosting provider to determine whether or not they will work for you. You’ll often find that for as little as $10 a month you can get 6,000 megabytes of disk space, 6,000 POP3 email accounts, unlimited data transfer, and unlimited names hosted. As you can see, you don’t have to spend a fortune to obtain quality web hosting.

The great thing about the Internet is that it doesn’t matter where you live or where the web host is located, for instance, you don’t have to look for Vancouver web hosting or Canada web hosting. The reason for this is that most web hosts offer hosting services to just about anyone, which makes your selection bigger, but if you have defined how much you want to spend and what features you need, it will weed out much of the competition.

If you know what you want and you don’t allow yourself to settle for anything less, you’ll find that there are a handful of great web hosting providers out there to choose from. A good web host can make all of the difference for your web host because their features and ability to keep you online and accessible to your clients. Quality, affordable web hosting services can be found, so don’t settle for anything less!

Chris Robertson is an author of Majon International, one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing companies on the web. Learn more about Finding Affordable Web Hosting or Majon’s Internet directory.