Classification of Web Hosting Terms
As the number of Web pages grows to trillions of pages on the Internet, Webmasters have too many hosting plans to choose from – affordable web hosting, Cheap Web hosting, ASP Web Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated Servers, eCommerce Hosting, FrontPage Web Hosting, Hosting With Templates, Managed Web Hosting, PHP Web Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting, Unix / Linux Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, Windows Hosting and Co-location Hosting.
Those commonly used web hosting terms represent the many faces of web hosting. All web hosting plans and terminologies can be classified in terms of cost, programming languages, operation systems, Web servers and functionality.
Cost – Web hosting plans are referred as affordable web hosting, budget hosting and cheap web hosting. Cost of web hosting is the first thing that many small site owners are looking for. Affordable web hosting, budget hosting or cheap web hosting plan often cost less than $5 per month.
Programming Languages – If you want to add dynamics and interactivity to your websites and you happen to know something about programming, you want to hosting plans that support the programming languages that you know well or want to master. The commonly used wen development languages include PHP, ASP, JSP and PERL. The hosting plans that support those programming languages are referred as PHP Web hosting, ASP Web hosting, JSP Web hosting or PERL Web hosting.
Operating Systems – Once you’ve picked up the programming language(s) for your Web development, you still have freedom to choose the operating system that hosts your Websites. Besides ASP which works only on Microsoft Windows, other programming languages, PHP, JSP and PERL, work on Windows, Unix and Linux. Hosting plans that support particular operating systems are referred as Window Hosting, Unix Hosting or Linux hosting.
Servers – Apache is the most widely supported Web server in Web hosting industry. ASP works only on Mirosoft Internet Information Server or IIS server. Weblogic or Websphere is needed for JSP hosting. When webmasters are talking about Web servers, they’re most interested in the server performance – Managed Web Hosting, Shared Hosting, Dedicated Servers, or Virtual Private Servers (VPS). Shared hosting is the cheapest plan, and you can host as many sites as you like with a Reseller Hosting option. VPS costs around $50 a month, and Dedicated Server plan will cost from $50 – $100 or more a month dependent on storage space and bandwidth of the hosting plan.
Functionality – There’re hosting plans out there that either make the site creation easier or offer support for secure online transactions. A simple website can be easily created in hours if you choose hosting plans that support various templates. Ecommerce hosting plan is the choice for sites that provide shopping carts and accept payment online.
Copyright @2005, Bruce Zhang
You have permission to publish this article electronically free of charge, as long as the bylines and links in the body of the article and the bylines are included.
Bruce Zhang has over 10 years of experience in web development, database design and managing web servers. He currently manages dozens of websites using ASP Web Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated Servers, eCommerce Hosting, FrontPage Web Hosting, Hosting With Templates, Managed Web Hosting, PHP Web Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting, Unix / Linux Hosting for web hosting needs.
Web Hosting, Where to Start?
Web hosting is a necessity when starting your web presence, with out it you don’t have a site, but finding high quality web hosting can be a daunting challenge, after all, do you need one gigabyte of bandwidth, web hosting with one IP, unlimited databases or a free domain name. What does this really mean and what should you be looking for when you try to find a suitable web hosting company.
Web hosting companies are extremely profitable if they are popular, they have high start-up costs, but over time their general overheads dramatically reduce (proportionally). This is evident if you think that they have to pay to get directly connected to the backbone in order to establish the fastest possible connection, they need secure fire resistance premises, equipment, support staff and much more.
Once established their costs per web hosting account reduce, if you go to a major web hosting company and order a web hosting server, all they are really doing is adding a computer to their existing network, therefore splitting the overall costs. Then you pay approximately $150-$200 per month to keep that dedicated web hosting server.
Your web hosting requirements
You need to realistically establish what web hosting requirements you have for your site, do you really need 400 gigabytes of bandwidth (transfer) per month? Most sites are lucky to use 2 gigabytes per month from their web hosting account. Databases are another big issue, many web hosting companies change extra for databases, when in actual fact they don’t cost anything to maintain as they reside on the same server. So before you proceed, you need to analyse what web hosting requirements you really have, look at the script requirements you have of any potential software products you plan to use on your web hosting account.
Another limitation a lot of web hosting companies impose is the amount of mailboxes you can have, many people start on the internet with the intention of offering their friends, family and staff email boxes as well as numerous emails for their site, for example webmaster@domain.com , support@domain.com , jobs@domain.com and contact@domain.com . The chances are you really don’t need that many mail boxes and administering them can be a gruelling task.
You know your web hosting requirements, what next?
Your primary goal should be to visit web hosting information sites in order to obtain a list of potential web hosting companies. A great web hosting information resource is Web Hosting Village, they provide web hosting articles, news and information, and in fact the best place to start your search for quality web hosting.
Creating a list of potential web hosting companies
Given that web hosting companies are profitable, they tend to advertise immensely across the internet. The more successful a web hosting company is the more they are willing to spend on web hosting related advertising. Therefore finding hosting companies via paid advertising, such as Googles Adsense, is generally a good idea as this a good step to take to establish how successful they have been.
Short listing
In order to short list your potential web hosting companies you need to visit each site and just quickly look around, if the design is poor or they don’t offer adequate support, then the chances are this web hosting company is not for you. Whether you are new to the whole web hosting experience or an expert, there will eventually be a time when you need to contact your web hosting support. If they are non existent then you will really have a problem, so establishing their channels of communication and support should be one of your top priorities when selecting a web hosting company.
Inside information
Once you have a shortlist of several web hosting companies, you need to research them via forums and webmaster communities. Chances are if someone has had a bad experience or extremely good they will want to write about it somewhere on the internet.
Selection
You should now have a list of two to three potential web hosting companies who you are really impressed with, now you need to make the selection. The best way is to weigh up the features and price and be really realistic as to your requirements, we have all been in the situation where we have been over ambitious and bought something that is too advanced for us.
If you have a winning concept that will make you bigger than Yahoo or eBay, the chances are you still don’t need a mega server when you start off, you just need something small and stable that will allow you to develop and promote your business. Once you have a good source of income you can upgrade your web hosting account with your current supplier and not experience any downtime whatsoever, so why pay for a mega web hosting account when you can get by with a $19.99 a month web hosting account and use the additional amount on marketing or development.
James Piper, the owner of http://www.webhostingvillage.com, and avid web hosting enthusiast invites you to visit the internets best web hosting resource, Web Hosting Village. We have information and articles on everything from web hosting to dedicated servers.
Choosing a High Quality Web Host
There are a lot of web hosting companies around the web that offer many hosting plans. Before you choose one you should consider a few things before purchasing. A few things that you should consider are how reliable the company is, how much space are they giving, and do they have the features that I need.
Reliability should be the main focus when looking for a web host. The host that you’re considering should have a guarantee uptime of ninety-nine percent. If your host is not reliable then you’re losing traffic to your web site that you have worked so hard on obtaining. One way of finding out if the host is reliable is by going to a search engine and searching for reviews for that host. If people are giving positive reviews about this hosts uptime then is probably a reliable host, but the only true way will be to test for yourself after you find these reviews.
Another thing that points out when talking about web hosting is disk space. How do I know how much disk space I will need? For the basic user a web site is less than 7mb. If your not a heavy user or not going to have a lot of files stored on your host you will not need a lot of space. For people that are doing big sites and incorporating video, audio and large graphics in their site would need a lot more space than other webmasters. There is no need to pay more for space that you’re not going to use. If you need more space check and see if the host offers a upgrade plan for if your site was to grow larger than expected.
How much bandwidth should I look for? If your just starting out, not getting a lot of traffic the basic bandwidth should work for you, however if your using video, audio, and larger graphics you may require more bandwidth. I would recommend that you start with the basic bandwidth and upgrade as need.
Also when looking for your web host check to see if they offer the features that you need. Some features that you may want to consider is do I need to use sever side scripting such as PHP, JSP, ASP or any other scripting language that you program in or would like to use with your web site. Cpanel is a feature that I find very useful when working with web hosting servers. Cpanel offers a user interface to applications on the server, such as setting up FTP, email, etc.
Tony Smith provides useful information on web hosting. Check out our site for your web hosting needs.
Choosing a Web Host: Research Before You Decide
Hundreds of hosting providers are competing these days to attract customers in different ways. In most cases, their offers look very similar, especially to those who are new to web hosting, making the selection of a good hosting provider a very difficult and confusing task.
If you are new to web hosting, you first need to know the basics of web hosting. You should know the answers to the following questions:
1. What is a web host?
2. What are the available host server platforms? What are the differences between server types?
3. What is the bandwidth?
4. What is a domain name? How Can I get one?
5. How can I create web pages?
6. What are scripting languages? What can I do with them?
7. What is FTP?
8. What features do I need for my website?
If you don’t know the answers to the above questions, you can find answers and hints here.
If you are only intending to build a small and simple personal website to publish your pet’s (or family) pictures, then you don’t need to worry, almost any hosting plan will meet your needs. You can go for the cheapest provider, even free ones.
However, If you are about to build a business site to sell goods or services, then you have to be careful about all the details of your new web host. You must read, research, compare and then decide. You don’t want to spend your time, effort and money to attract customers to a website that is not up to your business requirements; this will really hit your image.
It is certainly important to study the features required in the hosting plan. You must know what does storage capacity, bandwidth, platform and scripting languages mean, and how important each one is for your new website, but this is not enough, not at all.
After you shortlist the candidate hosts to only include the ones that meet your requirements, do some research on providers’ history, read some unbiased reviews about their services and explore some customer experience. These are the factors that should make your final decision.
Be careful when researching such information about a provider. Performing a quick search on google about “best web hosting†or “top 10 hosting companies†will not directly return the right and honest information. Most of hosting reviews sites are not actually providing honest reviews. Instead of giving it based on the quality of service, the highest ranks and best reviews are actually given to the companies paying higher commissions to their affiliates. I’ve seen this on quite a lot of review sites.
So, after you have narrowed your web host choices to several providers, you’ll need to take a more in-depth look at them before deciding which one you should go with. You have to perform a thorough evaluation process which might take hours, or even days, for each choice. Sources of information that can support your evaluation process can be in:
1. At least three honest and unbiased review sites.
2. Several reviews in more than one web hosting forum.
3. Direct feedback from real customers of the candidate providers.
Web Hosting Review Sites
Hosting directories and review sites are useful in the process of narrowing your search, especially those who provide an automatic search utility based on price, space, bandwidth, OS, etc. which can save your time and effort in this aspect.
Avoid review sites with “top 10†sort of recommendations. Go for those which provide user reviews, and read the reviews carefully. Compare reviews and user opinions from as much review sites as you can, at least three. As stated above, be careful when reading customer reviews as some hosts might encourage their new customers to write favorable reviews by offering some advantages.
Web Hosting Forums
Open forums are important source of reviews and customer experience. They are open places where customers can write their reviews and opinions about their hosts. However, they can have the same problem as review sites: a provider can write very positive reviews about his own company. The opposite might also happen: competitors can write very negative reviews about their competitors. In some forums, this activity is not permitted. Moderators are strictly monitoring the forums for such activities and deal with them in away that preserve their honesty and credibility, but this cannot guarantee that all the reviews are 100% accurate and honest. Keep in mind: what fits with other users’ needs might not fit with your needs.
Search for “web hosting forum†in any search engine and you will get hundreds of them. My favorite one is www.webhostingtalk.com. Almost all forums have a search services from which you can search for your candidate hosting provider’s name or URL. If you get results for your search, read as much related threads as possible. If you don’t get results you can post a thread asking for customer reviews about the intended provider(s). Again, don’t base your final decision on one opinion. Read reviews in different threads on more than one forum.
Feedback from Customers
Some web hosts list samples of their customers. Others have forums on their websites for support, where you will see examples of issues raised by real customers and how did the company dealt with. On those forums you might get addresses of some customers. Try to contact those customers to find out what they think about the service and support.
At this point, you can make a decision based on a combination of the gathered information. You will most probably be satisfied with the host you choose.
Abbas Alafoo is the creator of http://www.website-hostings.net, a collection of articles and tutorials about web hosting, design, development, promotion, and administration.
Simple Tips for Choosing Good Webhosting
When you start your own website, you want to make sure that you have reliable, decent hosting – if your host is down all of the time, your site might as well not even exist in the first place. So, to keep things smooth and simple for a webmaster-to-be, I have composed a list of tips for choosing the best hosting for your site.
Running a website does not have to be expensive. There are reliable hosts that can handle your site for 5 to 7 dollars per month. So long as you don’t have a huge website, one of these hosts is really all a person needs to manage their site.
It used to be that you had to pay tons of money on a domain name in addition to hosting, but more and more web hosting companies are offering a free domain name when you sign up, so keep an eye out for these – could save you a handful of money right there!
To get an idea of what companies are offering the best bang-for-the-buck at the moment, consider checking out an independent web hosting review site for recommendations. Do be careful though, as there are some review sites out there that are just scams set up by the owners of a hosting company to try to get them more business!
Look out for activation fees. Some hosts seem to be cheap at first – until you read the fine print to find out that they have a 50 dollar activation fee!
Check out the types of customer support a company offers. Web based instant message type support can be very quick and efficient when you have problems.
Think ahead when you buy hosting. Are you going to build a plain HTML based site? Or is there a chance you could want to add a forum or another dynamic feature to your site in the future? If so, you’ll want to make sure the site has PHP and MySQL. CGI might also be a requirement for you.
With these easy tips, you can be on your way to mastering your own website in no time!
Ryan Bauer is a large-scale webmaster who runs a Web Hosting Review website and writes how-to articles for computer users.