Web Hosting

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.

What is a Dedicated / Virtual Dedicated server and why is it different than normal web hosting. Web hosting offers you limited control of how the server your web site is hosted on behaves. Normal hosting plans put many customers' accounts on a single server and you upload your files to that Server. Dedicated / Virtual Dedicated servers allow you to actually control your own server where you receive Admin access to install and run virtually anything YOU want on the server. You can host multiple web sites on the one server account, and even sell hosting and host other sites on your server.

The price of dedicated hosting services has really come down in the past couple of years. In fact, prices have dropped so much for the "budget dedicated server" market. While competitive conditions in both the hosting industry and the computer hardware industry have contributed to the reduction in dedicated hosting costs, don't think that prices were that inflated in the first place. Budget servers are fantastic but it takes more than a competitive market to offer services at such great prices. Much thanks to the great overbuilds of networks, data centers and computer hardware in the dot-com days, companies with a bit of buying power can acquire the hard-resources it takes to provide a good quality un-managed dedicated server for a great price. Finding a dedicated server for $199 a month or less these days is not that difficult. When shopping for your dedicated server, consider more than just price. Managed Services Before just lining up the amount of ram, the processor speed, the data transfer and the price ask yourself - what else can this company do for me that I need now, or may need down the road. While there are plenty that do it, a 1 person effort to maintain a mission critical or high traffic server is no easy task. It helps to have others helping look out for your interests as well. Check to see if your host provides managed services such as backups, monitoring, firewalls and intrusion detection. Sometime they may be included in the plan but nearly always can be negotiated in at a reasonable price and can be well worth the investment. Technical Support The level of support received with your dedicated services is important as well. Some dedicated hosts offer email only support in order to keep costs down while others flat out charge a fee for a support ticket. Your preferred method of receiving support plus the level and frequency in which you will need it should certainly be considered. The Quality of Your Network Most dedicated hosting providers these days have pretty substantial internet connectivity. Nonetheless, it is something you should be aware of. Look for a host that has redundant connectivity via multiple providers insuring as much connectivity uptime as possible. Some of the major connectivity providers these days are Sprint, UUNet, Savvis, AT&T, Qwest and Cogent. Summary A very cheap server deal does not simply mean you are dealing with an overly generous hosting company or that another provider is ripping you off at a higher rate. While some hosts do price more competitively than others, there are associates costs that must be covered. When shopping for your next dedicated server just keeps in mind you may not always be comparing apples to apples. Please refer following web sites for useful resources related to web site hosting: http://www.vipwh.com http://www.thehostingguide.com

So - you know shared hosting no longer cuts it, and your single office connection is not enough to host a web server - so which is best, leasing a dedicated server or buying your own server and co-locating it someone's data center? Difference For those that are unsure of the difference, here it is in a nutshell. When you co-locate, you are simply renting space within someone else's facility to store your own server or servers. It's like a high tech gym locker that you are renting all or part of to house your servers. You either ship or deliver your server to your provider. Additional services provided with co-location vary from host to host but it certainly won't include the actual server. With a dedicated server you are getting all the features of co-location, plus the actual web server itself. Which is better? While it certainly depends on your particular needs, and there are excellent situations for both the dedicated server option is quickly becoming a better choice in more and more cases. If you already own a web server, or cluster that you prefer to use, then obviously co-location may be your best choice. If you are considering buying new equipment and shipping it off for co-location - please reconsider. The prices and equipment available in dedicated hosting these days are outstanding plus relieve you of the burden of hardware. Most hosts keep identical spare parts on hand for the types of servers used and are quick to react if something fails. Depending on your arrangement with a colocation deal hardware failure could mean paying to have a server shipped back (or you drive to get it), having it fixed yourself then sending it back to the data center. Please refer following web sites for useful resources related to web site hosting: http://www.vipwh.com http://www.thehostingguide.com

What is Dedicated Web Hosting? Dedicated web hosting can alleviate the need to share hardware or software with any other sites or web pages. Webmasters are given the autonomy to decide on applications that are installed on the server to create specific configurations for their web needs, and have the ability to provide a secure environment for their site. As compared to a shared-server environment, dedicated web hosting offers a peace of mind that a site will be delivered in a reliable and secure manner.

Why is dedicated hosting such a big hit on the business web hosting market? If you look at the costs it involves, usually ranging from $150 - $1000 per month, another question comes into your mind: Does it even worth it?

Dedicated web hosting has its difficulties and problems from time to time like all technology. However, there are certain things you can do to prepare yourself for any server downtime or other problems that might arise. The key, however, to these tips is that you are aware of them before the problem occurs rather than afterwards. The following three timesaving tips will help you with your dedicated web hosting and save you a lot of time.

AutoResponders are nifty scripts that run in your web server 24/7 serving immediate email responses to questions, support and sales. Think about this, your customer comes to your website and spends a round 200$ to get your product. And after the payment they don?t get back any response for the next 10 hours, would they like it? No, and this is more damaging if they have requested some additional pre-sales information and don?t receive any notification in the next 1 hour. In this Internet world, your competitor is just a click away. Your customer goes back to the search results and clicks the next website that gives a similar product. Lost sales, and more money in your competitor?s hands! This is twice the loss as the competitor is going to spend a percentage of the money in advertising the product or building a better product. Auto responders help reduce this possibility by carefully scripting the follow up messages based on the incoming queries your pre-sales information can be safely and securely delivered without delays. This translates into better sales.

Virtually anyone with an email address knows what Spam is, and has, perhaps, considered giving up the speed, convenience, and simplicity of email because of it. Those who have their own websites are more vulnerable than the average person with a single work or home email address from their company or Internet Service Provider. Email addresses visible on a website can quickly become Spam magnets, as automated programs, similar in form to search engine spiders, roam the web, looking for addresses to which new broadsides of Spam may be fired. Website hosting companies generally provide their clients email accounts for use with their domain, but are you with a host that provides those email accounts with Spam and virus protection?

Does GoDaddy really suck?

Are you looking for web hosting? If you want to set up a personal website, or a modest commercial one, you are probably in the market for an inexpensive shared hosting plan. Those entry-level plans may cost $5-10 per month, and often boast very generous features for that modest prize. However, the strong competition often causes the companies to oversell, and then have difficulties living up to their promises. And how do you go about telling the good ones from the bad? Maybe you go to one of the many web hosting review sites. Those places may offer extensive listings of various web hosting companies and their features; which is certainly helpful. But be aware of the fact that these review sites are out there to make money by referring new customers to the hosting companies! Therefore, they tend to praise those companies that pay them the best. I used to be naive about these things, trusting the review sites. That was until I began some serious research on the subject myself. Were they really so good, those much-praised web hosting companies? Soon, I was able to uncover large amounts of customer testimonials that told a different story. It became clear that several very large and well-known web hosting companies had surprising amounts of negative customer ratings against them. There were many angry customers that related stories about incompetent or non-existent customer support, billing disputes where the company kept charging ex-customers after they had cancelled their accounts; and more. One may say that any company with many customers is likely to have a few that are hard to please. But in these cases, there were scores of reviews, and the majority was negative! Since there are also cases where hosting companies have tried to prosecute those who have criticized them in public, I will not mention any names here. In conclusion: I advice anyone looking for a reliable and honest web hosting provider to be very careful and not put too much trust in the web hosting ratings commonly found at hosting review sites and similar places. Also be aware that the customer feedback published by the web hosts themselves on their sites is of course filtered - and may even be faked.

If you have ever used EBay then you know how important pictures are to a listing. By nature, people tend to pay more attention to the items that have pictures in the items for sale. The old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" has never been more true but in EBay's case a picture is worth $1.00, $2.00 or more...to EBay! If you want to add more than one picture to a listing or want additional features then you must be willing to pay EBay. Here is just a small list to illustrate the point:

John is very happy today, for the first time in his life he has created his very own website. Now he is looking for a web host so that he can put his identity on the net. Casually he asks his friend Mac about it. Mac tells him that web-hosting directories are the best place to look for a web host. Getting curious John then asks Mac what exactly a Web Hosting Directory is. Mac responds that web hosting directories are a web hosting marketplace where prospective hosts list their products, plans, prices and other important information so that according to their requirements, customers can choose a suitable plan. Along with the details, it also contains web hosts? rankings. John is now extremely happy as his dream is finally going to come to fruition. Like John, there are many beginners who are in search of a reliable web host and come across web hosting directories. Here a new question arises: Are these web hosting directories really trustworthy sources for novices like John? To find an answer it?s very important to understand the working of WHDs.

When you first start out trying to get a site on the Internet everything seems so confusing. Obtuse acronyms flow freely through the 'Beginner Friendly' information sites and definitions can be hard to come across. The main reason for this is that the Internet and the process of getting a website online is really very simple, and once people get past the first stumbling steps they rarely remember the difficulty they once had, which leads to them being unable to understand the next wave of dot com newbies.

After much Net surfing and looking at all the offers you've decided to take the plunge! You've investigated a good name for your idea. You've decided it's time to start searching for a home for your Internet vision. By golly, it's time to start your own enterprise! You're tired of all the reading and research! You're ready to go mano-a-mano!

Finding reliable hosting for your business opportunity is no small task. Actually, it can be a full-time undertaking!

The website hosting business is very competitive these days with hundreds of thousands of reliable hosting companies out there but what company is best for your needs and that will provide you with a reliable hosting service from customer support to the reliability of there web servers.

Choosing the right Web Hosting service for your website can be a little bit confusing. There's so many choices out there and many people aren't exactly sure what they should be looking for.

Well? you've purchased a domain name? created a pretty design? filled it with content? what now?

These days, web hosting companies are popping up faster than dandelions. And just like those pesky weeds, they usually aren?t going to benefit your business at all. So how do you pick out one hosting company for another for that big Internet move? Below I?ve provided you some quick ways to sift out the sheep from the wolves.

The internet is one of the world's top sources of information, products and just about anything else you could possibly want. And, if you have spent any amount of time online, you must have noticed that much of it is free.

Just finished your first website? So it's the time to look for some hosting and make a choise. Your first qustion probably will be whether to choose free or paid hosting service. Let's have a look at some advantages and disadvantages of these solutions.Free web hosting:(+) It's for free. You don't need to pay for domain name. (-) Your URL will be something like username.freehost.com or freehost.com/username. As I noticed above, the advantage is that you don't need to pay for domain. But note that if you move your website to another provider in the future you can loose some or all your traffic (there are some solutions how to solve this problem but it is not the point of this article). (-) Your provider will probably include ads to your pages - usually 1 or 2 banners, sometimes popup windows. If you plan to use banner exchange on your site read carefully their Terms and conditions. Some free hosts doesn't allow it. (-) Free hosts usually allow lower bandwith then paid hosts and a lot of them don't offer futures like PHP and MySQL. (-) A lot of free hosts change their Terms and conditions during some time. If your free host offers hosting wihtout ads now, don't be surprised when banner or popup appears on your site in the future. (-) Sometimes happens that free hosts cancel their free service and longer offer paid hosting only. In this case you have only 2 choises - pay them or loose your website.Paid web hosting:(+) You can host your own domain. If you decide to change the web hosting provider in the future, you easily transfer the domain to the new provider and don't loose your traffic. (+) Most paid hosts offer 24/7 support via email or live chat and some of them provide toll-free phone support. (+) You can expect better uptime then on free host. Some paid hosts offer uptime guarantee. (+) Paid hosts usually offer enough disk space and bandwith. Futures like PHP and MySQL are standard. Even if you are not programmer you can download plenty of free PHP scripts from internet. (-) Paid hosting coast money :o)

There is no concept of free lunch in the world, this is exactly true when we talk about free Web hosting for the webmasters. Before going ahead we must talk about what hosting exactly is; Hosting is the process of storing files onto a web server so that it can be accessible to viewers through a web browser.

When talking about free anything the legitimate question that first pops into your mind is why pay when you can get it free? And as for free web hosting there are plenty of places to get it from. As spread as they are, if you are not a stranger to the whole Internet experience, you might even have a web site hosted for free. Are you satisfied with your provider? Is it everything you wanted? Probably not. Anyway it is true that is comes with no cost and no other aggravations? or are there any?

1. The reliability of the service and their offers.