Online Shopping Guide

Archive for the ‘Web Hosting’ Category

Web Hosting: How to Make the Right Choice

There are several important steps to consider when choosing a web hosting company. It is important to carefully choose a company that is able to offer all the features required by a Webmaster.

Do not be tempted in selecting a company purely on the price. Today hosting is cheap and the competition is strong to attract new customers.

Do some research with independent reviews of hosting companies you are interested in. See what type of reviews they have, paying special attention to their performance. How much time were they off the air off for example? Look for their uptime figures. Do a comparison with several companies.

How easy is it to get support from them? Many web hosting companies now have instant messenger service, which can offer instant answers to simple problems as well as email, phone, and fax, but normally receiving answers from these methods will be slower.

It’s no good having a hosting company that when a problem arises takes days to respond. Choosing the right company can make the difference between a successful partnership and serious problems if there are always faults.

Look at the features of the web hosting company, do they offer all the most common functions required?

How easy is it to use the features? Many companies offer cpanel and Fantastico, which makes adding new items to websites very easy. Be sure to investigate the features offered. Check how much disk space and bandwidth is being offered.

Check how many domains can be hosted on one account, some companies allow one domain, others allow 10 domains and some have unlimited domain hosting.

Most people start with a small hosting plan, make sure it is easy to upgrade to a larger plan if required. Some hosting plans have limited options for upgrading.

It is normally advisable to register a domain name with one company and then transfer the domain name to the hosting company. This is very easy and is only a question of directing the domain to the hosting company domain name server. They will tell you how to do this.

The reason to have a domain name registered independently from the hosting company is that it makes it easier to transfer to a new host if required.

Some of the cheaper hosting companies offer a free domain name, but it is very important to make sure this name is registered in your name in the Whois database, which registers details of the owners of domains. Sometimes companies can try to make you stay with their hosting plan with this free domain offer.

If you build a business, but are unhappy with the service offered, it is essential to be able to transfer quickly to a new hosting company.

Try to find a host that allows monthly payments, so that in the event that the service is poor or any other reason that makes a transfer necessary, a year’s payment hasn’t been wasted.

Most of the very basic hosting plans will only allow a yearly payment, but for anything else try to go for monthly billing.

About the Author

John is the owner of 1st Make Money Online, and has spent several years studying the best ways to succeed online. Make Money Online Web Hosting

Web Hosting: How to Make the Right Choice by John Sullivan

How to select the Right Web Host?

How to select the right web host? – The question every person who has just completed the design and about to launch his/her favorite website tend to ask oneself. Well, one must understand in the first place itself that selecting the right web host is not that simple a task. There are thousands of web hosting services existing in each country and many of them provide similar services at almost the same rates as well. Hence, it might take a while and some effort in studying and researching about each service provider before you could proclaim, ‘yes, this is the right provider I was looking for’. In this article, we try to change this pattern a bit. The tips that are been included in the next few paragraphs would urge you to view the scenario more rationally and if you follow it precisely, then there is no reason to think why you can’t find the right web hosting service provider.

As a first step, see if the web hosting service provider is offering round the clock customer support. Remember, in the game of servers, memory, and bandwidth, glitches can happen anytime – irrespective of the name and fame of the service provider – and what matters is how quickly and efficiently the provider could fix it in less time. To test this facility, you just ring them up, their customer care. On a general scale, you will be surprised by the number of unanswered calls you find in the process. Always go for those with 24/7 customer care facilities.

It is always a prudent idea to take into account the reviews about a web hosting service provider, especially if it had been written by one of its previous clients. But, at the same time, don’t believe the writings found on the company’s forums or in the hosting directories. Most of the times, such reviews will be partisan or might be favoring the company.

Watch out for those web hosting companies that offer or boast a never ending backup of RAM and CPU. Another catch phrase employed by web hosting companies is ‘unlimited bandwidth and memory space’. But, one should be intelligent enough to realize that these are just games involving numbers and practically, none of the web servers on this earth has such features in place. Further, if the rate of a web hosting plan and the offer they put forward in terms of server resources are not congruent, it can be safely assumed that the plan is a scam. More server resources definitely cost more. The moral of the story is, don’t go by the plans entirely, but use one’s discerning senses as well, to full use.

Finally, go for a domain that is reasonably old in business. Chances for new domains going bust in the fast paced web hosting business race is high. In fact, that is the trend witnessed in the hosting industry with about 95% of the players going out of business within their first year itself. It is easy to be a hosting company, but the difficult part is in sustaining the business.

About the Author

Fei Lim is the manager of Flizard Technologies which provides web hosting services, web design services, turnkey solutions, domain name services, and other internet services.

How to select the Right Web Host? by Fei Lim

All about Linux/Unix-based hosting

It means hosting that is provided on Linux/Unix operating systems platforms. There isn’t much difference between these two types of operating systems because Linux/Unix is an improved version of Linux/Unix operating system. When just applying for web hosting companies for web hosting that is based on Linux operating system it doesn’t matter which one you are using on your computer as it is commensurable with any operating system. Usability Some years ago Linux operating system used to be available only for professionals and if you were not an experienced user you had no future with this OS. In the last couple of years the situation has changed.

Providers have done their best to make users’ web sites administrating more comfortable and easier. In case you’re just a beginner you’ll find friendly control panels that include Web-interface. And if you are an experienced user you can control your site by means of shell. Reliability Experts claim that Unix-based platform is one of the most reliable ones but it will mainly depend on maintenance stuff professionalism. Thus quality and stability of Linux-based web hosting won’t depend on some sudden system bugs and the operating system consistency itself secures your web site operating dependability. Functionality In this area Linux differs the most from other popular platforms.

It can handle a lot of processes that happen at the same time. This gives you a possibility to get more from the server. What Scripting Languages Are Available For Unix? Unix supports a wide variety of application languages, more than any other operating system. The most common applications of such kind include C, C++, Shell, Perl, Tcl, Python, Java and PHP. What Databases Does Unix Support? Databases available for Unix are mSQL and mySQL. The one you choose would depend on your own needs and your Host Provider’s offers. This is important for you to review when choosing a hosting company. Cost Linux operating system was developed by Linus Torvalds as an alternative to other operating systems and is being improved by many specialists all around the world. Most of its versions are free of charge.

This circumstance makes Linux-based hosting much cheaper than any other. As for Linux versions they are sometimes called Linux Distributions. The most popular Distributions are RedHat and Mandrake. Which are easy to install have a lot of different utilities and suitable for any web hosting type. Why choose Linux/Unix-based hosting? So, as it was mentioned before using this platform is cheaper and more convenient than others. All existent scripts, like PHP, function best when using the Linux-based web hosting. Linux/Unix based web hosting upgrading possibilities increase when using Shell and Telnet access. The Linux/Unix-based platform is probably the most stable and reliable.

About the Author

Victoria Nikolayeva is a writer and articles editor of sites http://www.cheap-web-hosting-directory.com , http://www.web-site-hosting-reviews.com and http://www.web-hosting-review.net.

All about Linux/Unix-based hosting by Victoria Nikolayeva