40,000 New Blogs Are Started Daily How Your Web Hosting Business Can Cash in
The fact that an estimated 40,000 new blogs are being started daily should be of great interest to anybody already in the web hosting business or intending to go into it. Especially those planning to go into the business as affiliates or as resellers because this group of online entrepreneurs are in a very good position to cash in quickly on this amazing growth rate of blogs with hardly any investment necessary.
While it is true that a vast majority of blogs are hosted free, it is also true that many blogs are gaining high traffic so quickly that they are forced to quickly find paid web hosting as they exceed their allocated bandwidth.
The other fact to bear in mind is that virtually all successful bloggers own several blogs. This is significant because it is not easy to own several websites since lots of technical know-how and time are required to maintain a single website, let alone several. This is not the case with a blog that mainly requires content and very little technical knowledge to run very successfully. In terms of business volumes this simply means that a web hosting business that targets blogs is bound to grow a lot faster than the one that only seeks clients from the ranks of traditional websites.
The other significant factor in blogs that should be of great benefit to any web hosting business is the huge traffic that blogs seem to enjoy almost effortlessly.
All a web host entrepreneur needs to do, is to find a way to advertise their web hosting services to this blog traffic. There are several ways of doing this. You can for example look for acceptable ways of creating as many links from the blogs to your web hosting sites as possible. You can even start your very own blog on the subject.
Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for http://www.websitesource.com and http://www.lowpricedomains.com with experience in the website hosting industry.
How to migrate your Linux Web site to another Web Hosting company
The Web site hosting business has become more competitive in recent years. If you can find a better hosting deal, you may be able to save money by switching hosting providers. But what’s the best way to move your Web site? What if you have a virtual private server (VPS) hosting several domains? What about PHP and your SQL data? The thought of moving may be daunting, but moving servers is not difficult if you plan properly. Here’s how.
A complete migration involves transferring the site data itself, meaning all the HTML and possibly PHP and MySQL files and CGI programs. You also need to modify the Domain Name System (DNS) information for the site and for the routing of the site email. DNS holds information that translates IP addresses to human-readable domain names. For Web site migration, the two important DNS records are the address (A) record, which tells the browser the IP address of the Web server, and the mail exchange (MX) record, which tells mail servers how to route the email.
When you migrate your Web site to another hosting provider, you need to update DNS to point browsers to the new location of your site. However, it can take as long as 48 hours for DNS updates to propagate to all DNS servers on the Internet. Part of your planning will be how to deal with that delay.
Often your domain name has been registered via a third-party domain name registration company. When you move the site, your domain name company remains the same, and only your Web hosting company changes. If your domain name originaly came with hosting, you may need to contact your old hosting company to see if you can separate the hosting package from the domain name.
The keys to a successful move are planning and preparation. Before the move you should warn your users or customers of the forthcoming upgrade. Prepare a “server down for upgrade” page for your old site. Note the IP addresses of your new and old servers; these will come in handy when DNS is still in flux.
Decide when to upgrade, meaning when your server is least busy. If you have site statistics, use those to determine the best time. To reduce down time, it is best to make the DNS changes several hours before you actually move the domain. As long as your mail server is running on the new server, you won’t lose any email messages. If you have a static site, you can copy over the data before you switch DNS and no one will ever know your hosting provider changed. For a dynamic site you can out a skeleton site on your new server until you make the full move.
The DNS changes you need to make involve updating the MX and A records to point to your new server. To do that, you need to access the control panel provided by the domain name registration company from which you obtained your domain name.
The new MX record will need to point to the new server. Like A records, MX records can take a while to propagate through the Internet. To avoid mail loss you will need to check your old mailbox at least once a couple of days after the move. You will also need to use the IP address of the old mail server rather than its domain name, as you won’t be able to rely on mail.domain.com to check the old mailbox, as that will point to your new server. Depending on how much control you have of your old server, you could shut down the mail server after modifying the MX records, in which case incoming mail would queue up until the new mail server is running, at which point it would be delivered without problems.
Once you’ve handled the DNS information, it’s time to tackle the data itself. HTML and PHP files aren’t hard to move; just use a good FTP program and copy the data from one server to the other. If you have SSH access to both of the servers you can copy the files directly. If you don’t, you will have to download the files to a local machine and then upload them to the new server.
Moving databases is a bit more complex. Assuming you are using MySQL, there are several ways to copy over the data. One is to do a dump of the data into a file and then copy that file to the new server and populate the new database. To do this you use the mysqldump command:
$ mysqldump -p -u username mydatabase > mydata.sql
Once copied onto the new server your can populate your new database with the mysql command:
$ mysql -p -u username mydatabase < mydata.sql
If you don’t have SSH access to your servers you won’t be able to use these MySQL commands, but you can still use a tool such as phpMyAdmin that handles MySQL administration over the Web. phpMyAdmin has excellent dump and restore features, though for the restore there is a maximum upload file size of 2,048KB. You can use compression to maximize your chances of squeezing all of your data into 2MB. [what if you have more than 2MB, as many of our readers will? - Lee, I have altered the next paragraph to clarify this]
If you lack SSH access and you have too much data for phpMyAdmin to handle, look into a MySQL synchronization tool called SQLyog Job Agent (SJA).
If all else fails you will need to ask the support team of your old hosting company to dump your database for you. Then you will need to ask the support team of your new hosting company to populate the new database.[Lee, I have added this paragraph in case readers don't have ssh, can't use phpMyAdmin and can't use SJA.]
If you have a site with dynamic data, such as an e-commerce site, you need to make special provisions for the DNS update delays. As the DNS changes propagate through the Internet some people will see your new site and others your old. This could cause problems for you. Imagine a customer placing an order on your old site after you have moved all the data over to your new site.
There are two [different] ways you can deal with this problem. [Lee, this is an either-or] First, stop taking orders on the old site once you have started the move. At the checkout stage display a polite notice asking customers to come back in a couple of hours, after which they should be taken to the new site. If you don’t have that kind of control over your site then the best thing is to close down the old site by replacing its index.html with a notice saying the server is down for upgrades and will be back soon. An alternative solution is to use a synchronization tool like SJA to make sure any changes made on the old site get propagated to the new one.
Finally, watch out for incompatibilities between the software on your old server and that on the new. Try to make sure that any difference in versions of crucial software like MySQL and PHP won’t cause any problems.
If you host a VPS installation then you probably have several domains to migrate. The problems are the same, but there is more work to do. If you have a VPS you should warn your customers in plenty of time about the upcoming move. Call it a server upgrade, as this will cause less worry.
An advantage of having a VPS is that you have more control of your sites. You probably have SSH access and you can do things like shutting down the mail server during the transition. However, if you are hosting domains for others, then there is the problem of passwords. When you move to the new server you will need to re-create domains and user accounts, but you won’t have access to the passwords set by your customers. Generally you will need to issue your customers new passwords. Again, plenty of advanced warning will help ease the pain.
If your VPS uses Plesk 7 Reloaded then migration becomes a lot easier. This software includes a great (though still experimental) tool called the Migration Manager that supports migrating from remote servers using Plesk 2.5.x, 5.x, 6.x, and 7.x, as well as Confixx 2, Ensim 3.5.x, and cPanel 9.
To use the Migration Manager you need to enter the remote host address (it is best to use the IP address), the login name (normally root) and the password. After that you set the remote system type (Plesk, cPanel, etc.) and click Next. The Migration Manager will then send an agent to the remote server and offer you a list of domains and clients on the remote server. If you migrate a client it will bring over the client data (like username and password) and all the domains belonging to that client. If you import a domain you will have to have a client account ready on the new server to take ownership of the imported domain.
Although experimental, for standard cases Migration Manager should work well. In a recent real-life migration, 95% of the domains [I moved for a client] migrated without a problem. There was one domain that had more than 100 subdomains that failed; They had to be copied over by hand!
When moving servers you need to keep downtime to a minimum. If you plan properly your users may not even notice that you have switched servers. If possible, perform a trial run of the actual move. No one will see your new site because you won’t update DNS yet. To enable you to see your new site, edit the /etc/hosts file on your client and add your domain name (including the www) with the new IP address. You should also restart your browser. Don’t forget to remove this entry when you have finished experimenting.
About the Author
Gary Sims has a degree in Business Information Systems from a British university. He worked for 10 years as a software engineer and is now a freelance Linux writer and founder of Low Price Hosting
Web Hosts Not All Are Created Equal
Many people think that all web hosts offer the same level of service within a certain price point. This could not be further from the truth. Fundamentally web hosting is web hosting but when you compare apples to apples you will find a broad range of differences that may or may not be a detriment to your business. Surprisingly the same web host provider that charges $5/month may have a direct competitor that charges $10/month for a comparable service plan. Below are 3 simple steps to help you determine what provider will best fit for your needs and where to find them.
1. Determine Your Price Point
Let’s face it; the bottom line is usually at the top of the list, which is price. You can spend anywhere from a few dollars a month to a few hundred depending on your needs. Only you can determine your budget and what you are willing to spend so the best bet is to choose a realistic middle ground on price and then begin shopping. A great place to start is CompareWebHosts.com, Inc. This is a very well known and established web hosting directory which lists many reputable web hosting companies such as eDataRack.com, Inc.. On this directory as well as many others like them you will find providers offering shared and dedicated hosting solutions. It is important to clarify and understand the differences between the two. Typically shared web hosting is more inexpensive than dedicated hosting. Shared web hosting can be compared to apartment living. You have a large building split up into many small rooms. All of the rooms share the same pluming, electricity, etc. In other words, all of the tenants share resources which makes doing business considerably more affordable for you and the provider because you share the web server and it’s resources with several hundred other accounts. Consequently a large percentage of individuals and businesses start out with shared hosting due to this fact. Shared web hosting has become much more sophisticated and reliable over the years. As a result of this thousands of businesses have benefited from a comfortable middle ground on price and reliability, which can be a win-win for everyone. Shared web hosting prices usually range from $5-$30/month on average. Dedicated hosting can be compared to owning your own home. No one else lives in that home accept you. You have all of the resources at your disposal. Therefore you control the performance of your web server based on the resources that your web site requires and not hundreds of other web sites along with yours as is the case in shared hosting. This type of hosting varies greatly in price as well but typically you can expect to pay any where from $99/month in upwards of $300-$400/month. The obvious benefit here is that your hosting reliability factor increases greatly as well as the control of your content and customization.
2. Determine Your Needs
What do you need? In other words, what are your requirements from your perspective web host and what are your expectations in relation to your budget? Web hosting in general has become much more affordable and competitive over the last few years but you should ask yourself some fundamental questions first. Do you require your web site to be available 24/7/365 100% all the time or can you / your business live with a modest 99.9% up-time which is normally the industry standard for a much lower price point then a higher end SLA (Service Level Agreement) from a more expensive provider. What level of support do you need or expect? Will you require 24/7/365 phone support for technical and sales assistance or will email and or ticketing system be sufficient? Another important aspect but highly overlooked is the issue of potential data loss. Make sure that the web host you choose offers back up / restore services or perhaps at least an option to ad it or make it available at an additional cost. Many people take this for granted that it is automatic but unless you see it advertised or offered in some form or fashion on the providers plan description do not assume that it is being done. You should also consider the number of email accounts and databases you may require. If you have employees they will most likely need individual email accounts for interoffice and external communication. If you plan on running an e-commerce shopping cart or a community forum of any kind you will need one or more databases. Make sure to clarify that this is an option through whichever provider you choose and if there are additional charges.
Typically email accounts are standard but many hosts do charge extra for databases and or limit both depending on their business model. Last but not least how much disk space and data transfer will you need? These days disk space and data transfer have become commodities and are relative, meaning they are extremely affordable to provide to you the customer. Performance, features, reliability, and customer service are what your dollars and cents are paying for so when it comes to the later if you know that your web site is going to be very graphic intensive and you anticipate growing a large database for what ever reason it does not hurt to have as much disk space and data transfer that your money will buy depending on your budget constraints. Even if you do not use it all at first you may very well grow into it and it will be there when and if you do need it.
3. Do Your Homework
So you have done your homework on steps 1 & 2 now its time to switch to research mode. Once you have narrowed your web hosting needs and price points its time to do a little digging on your perspective providers. Your research should begin on the providers own web site. Most companies have an “about us” page which may provide some relative background on company history and a summary of their products, services, and infrastructure. You should also read their privacy policy and terms of service. Never take anything for granted. You should know exactly what you’re entering into and what you can expect from your provider should problems arise. Reading these policies may also give you insight and knowledge on limitations between providers and what direction you can take with future needs as well as steps you can take to avoid any major problems until your budget and business requirements change accordingly. Many companies also provide a customer testimonial and FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page as well. Testimonials can provide helpful information on the types of web sites being hosted and how well the company is currently providing service to its existing customers. If companies FAQ page is done well it can provide a wealth of answers to commonly asked questions about sales and technical specifications that may not be listed on the home page. Of course one of the most important ways that you can do to research on the provider would be to actually contact them with questions that may not be apparently answered or any special needs that were not specifically addressed on any of the later sources above. By contacting the provider directly you can gage how responsive and accurate your questions are addressed which is obviously important.
In closing, it’s important to note that there are literally hundreds of specific needs that any one company or individual may require when searching for web hosting services. One could literally write a textbook on all of the industry specific questions and challenges when researching the various different types of hosting solutions. The short process outlined above is simply a fundamental foundation of steps that will hopefully serve as an informative beginners guide in the process.
Sean Shehan serves as Senior Vice President of Operations for eDataRack.com, Inc. which provides high quality, reliable hosting solutions at prices everyone can afford. eDataRack.com, Inc. was established in 2002 to meet market demand for high performance, reliable and affordable web hosting services. We have consistently strived over the past 4 years to deliver high quality services at the lowest price possible for our customers.
Niche Web Hosting
There is story of David and Goliath where Goliath would come and challenge everybody – “is there anyone amongst you who would dare to fight against me?” Who would dare to fight against him? He was a giant, there was nothing one could do to humble him.
David saw the situation in a different manner. Whatever he threw at Goliath it was sure to hit him. In the end we all know that David did win. The internet is also huge.
Here’s another story from the Indian Epic Mahabharat where once Dronacharya takes the Pandavas to the forest to test their skills in archery. He hung a model of a bird on a branch and asked each of them, one by one, to take aim at the bird and tell him what they saw. He first called Yudhishtar, the eldest of the 5 brothers. Yudhishtar saw the entire cosmos of which the earth was a part, then a tree which was a part of the earth, and finally a bird hung on the branch of the tree. Dronacharya asked him to sit down. One of the brothers, Arjun, could see only the eye of the bird, and nothing but the eye. He shot the bird right in the eye cause he could see nothing but his target.
While the internet is huge and global, when it comes to marketing the same old rule apply – The customer is the king. He is an individual and has his needs well defined. The internet maybe the Goliath, but each customer is the bird’s eye. The challenge for the webhost is thus in finding the bird’s eye. Webhost need to create plans which suit the customer’s needs rather than just focusing on things like price, uptime, reliability, support and so on which are all important. At the same time all decent webhosts today can offer similar plans , prices, guarantees and support.
A few years back we did some research in the selling aspect of the hosting industry. Our first reaction was that the cheapest host would do well. Or it would be even better if the cheapest host offered the best features and the maximum bandwidth and diskspace. Finally, we concluded that the largest host would be the cheapest host with the maximum bandwidth and diskspace, with the greatest support and this host would have ads all over the place. This may actually work out for many, but the Return of Investment (ROI) may take more than a life-time.
The webhosting industry comprises mostly of SMEs. For them huge investments in marketing may not be the best solution. Yet, there are many webhost who have grown from a reseller hosting system to a few thousand servers within no time. And interestingly none of the hosts we studied were actually selling cheap. They all focused on the right target markets. They create a niche market for themselves.
One webhost focussed only on resellers and called it private label reseller programs. They gave out more diskspace and bandwidth and charged a higher value. Their benefits – lesser customers, higher cash turnover and lesser support requests as the resellers looked after their own customers. Another webhost focussed on webmasters only. Webmasters generally have more than one site. Hosting is not their prime business and they want an affordable solution. Also, as most webmasters are tech savvy what they needed more than regular support is a community where they can interact with various other webmasters. Needless to say that these hosting companies did grow fast.
It did not take long for the clones to come and soon such plans became a standard in the industry. Webhosts are again facing the same challenge on howto effectively market. One approach webhosts can take is to focus on certain services of hosting only. Such as email only hosting. This would be useful for people for whom email is very critical. They may prefer to have the emails on another server which is exclusively for emails only. So even their main site goes down, they’ll still receive their mails. Another good example could be backup hosting only. Here the webhost would backup the entire data of a website on regular intervals.
Webhost can also focus on certain languages and software which are very popular. Not many hosts offer Java Servlets, Postgresql, Zope, etc.. Zope only hosting for example would surely lead all the Zope developers to use as well as recommend the Zope community a webhost who specializes in Zope hosting.
With broadband getting cheaper by the day, webhosts can now truly expect the market of application hosting to get popular. There is a whole new market of large and small corporate who would not mind keeping their data is secure networks. All they need to do is log into their servers and access their data from anywhere in the world. They would be looking for applications such as Compiere or a groupware where they can access, share and store the data on the net. Corporate would not mind paying a premium for such services. The webhosts have to assure security and reliability in such cases.
Adding value to what is being offered to the customer would always interest the customer is taking services from the webhost. A webhost can offer hosting with certain software pre configured for use.
Take a look at Postnuke for example. The latest version of postnuke has had over 39,000 downloads in just about 40 days. All the customer needs to do is change the logo of the site to his logo and start writing. hostnuke has taken the initiative and offering postnuke hosting. Their plans are not cheap. But because they specialize in postnuke hosting, most customers of postnuke would prefer to be with go with hostnuke.
One can offer hosting with a postnuke, gallery and phpBB forum all bundled into one. This gives the customer more time to focus on what he wants to do with his site rather than spend time on how to implement a CMS system or picture gallery.
Sites like hotscripts.com have a section which lists the popular software. Some good ones to offer with hosting are ikonboard, eZpublish, phpShop, Zope, A-Cart etc. After identifying the right software one can create scripts to automate the installation procedure and thus reduce the time to execute new orders.
And finally, one need not go and put in a lot of money for advertising with search engines or webhosting directories. All the webhost needs to do is advertise on the selected software’s home page and be present on their forums/mailing lists.
Amarjyoti Krishnan heads bobcares.com, a tech support company for webhosts and ISPs. He is the co-founder of Poornam Info Vision Ltd., a software and IT services company which specializes in Linux based solutions for Webhosts and ISPs. Poornam Info Vision is an ISO 9001:2000 certified company with a team of over 100 engineers.
Amarjyoti is a Computer Engineer based in India and has over 7 years of experience in the hosting industry. He has spoken and written extensively on the subject. His articles have been published both online as well as in print in magazines.
http://poornam.com
http://bobcares.com
http://amarjyoti.com
How to Move Your Domain Without Any Downtime
With a little advanced planning, moving your domain to a new hosting company is a painless process. The approach outlined here will allow you to move any domain without downtime. The basic steps are:
- Set up your new webhosting account
- If needed, transfer your domain
- Change your domain’s name servers
- Cancel your old hosting account
The first step is to set up a new webhosting account. Pick a host that has the features, support and cost that fit your budget. Follow their online signup process and set up the account. Make sure you upload all your files to the new site before going on. Step 1 can be completed in 1-24 hours.
The second step is to transfer your domain to a new registrar. I recomend this step IF your registrar and your hosting provider are the same company. Step 2 will take 24 hours wile the domain registries sort themselves out.
The third step is to change your name servers to the name servers of your new hosting provider. Simply log in to your domain registrar’s control pannel and update the name servers to the ones provided to you by your new hosting company. This step will take the longest. If you want to be paranoid about it, wait atleast 48 hours before going to the next step. The longer you wait the better, but 72 hour should be safe enough.
Last but not least, don’t forget to cancel your web hosting with your old internet provider.
Shawn is the owner of Tandac Enterprises and the Bed and Breakfast Connector.