How to Choose the Host with the Most

How to Choose the Host with the Most

The other day I was speaking to a client of mine about selecting a host for the website that they were planning to build. They asked me a question that I am sure many have on their minds. “Out of millions of options and hosting companies, how do we know which one is the best for us?” The answer is simple. There are three terms that must be met.Quality Service

Most site owners shopping for hosting will go online, find a $4.00 hosting company that offers 1000 Mbps of server space along with 24/7 technical support, and think that they have found a great deal.  The truth is that those are just letters and numbers.  Most hosting companies offer 24/7 technical support, but that statement is subject to a lot of interpretation.  Does 24/7 support mean that when I have an issue I will submit a ticket and wait 48 to 72 hours before my problem is resolved, or does it mean that I will reach a live person when I call the 800 support number that will actually answer my questions and resolve my issues?

My method usually involves calling the hosting support number before I even order the service to see what type of response I receive.  If I get a machine I will leave a message explaining my interest in their services and give the company one hour to respond. If they don’t respond in one hour to close new business, then it is unlikely that they will respond quickly once they have your business and you have an issue.  In the event that I do get a live person or immediate response, I then proceed to outline my hosting needs with the tech.  Most good techs know the products and services offered by their company.  If they don’t know enough about the product to sell it to you, then they can’t know enough to manage it and fix it.  Look for the tech that will answer your questions and make useful suggestions towards your goals.

Another important detail to know about the level of service is billing.  Important questions to ask include:

1.  Who handles billing?  An outside company or the same company you are purchasing the hosting from?

2.  Can billing issues be resolved by calling a support number?

3.  What payment methods are accepted?

4.  Do you have full control of your billing through an online account management platform that lets you change your information or look up current and past statements?

5.  Do you receive credits for referrals?

There are many hosting companies out there that will answer positively to all of the above questions.  Don’t settle for less…it might come back to bite you later. Once you have reached a level of comfort with the service that you are being offered, you should proceed to ask questions regarding the type of equipment the hosting company uses to provide your service.

How to Choose the Host with the Most – Quality Equipment

I know more than fifty clients who have lost every piece of data on their web server due to faulty equipment and policies provided by their hosting company.  The company (who is now out of business) didn’t have redundancy or backup policies of any sort.  They were in fact reselling the service without even knowing where the equipment was housed.  In this instance the equipment happened to be located in the World Trade Center and when 9/11 came along all of the clients on those servers lost everything.  This can be avoided by anyone willing to take a little time to do a bit of research.

Always find out where the physical servers are located and how the company handles backing up the data on those servers.  Is the backup performed on separate drives or a separate server altogether?  Most important is that you know your data IS being backed up at all.  Also be sure to find out their policies in the event that a server goes down, such as what their guarantee is for bringing the information back up.  If the server is down past the guaranteed time, then at a minimum you should receive a credit to your account.

That rule also applies to the network connection that the server has.  If the connection is down for longer than a certain period of time past the agreement, then it’s more than likely that the hosting company is getting credited — and that means you should be as well.  Verify with the company that there is existing network redundancy.  If there is only one T3 and no network redundancy, then I wouldn’t even think about using that company.  If you do, you are begging to fight day after day with receiving email and constantly having your visitors tell you that your site is unreachable. On that same note, make sure to find out some of the clients hosted by that company and visit their websites. Too many companies oversell their bandwidth and the last thing you want is to have a website that takes 10 minutes to load.

In addition to everything listed above I strongly recommend always keeping a backup CD of your own.  It doesn’t take a lot of time and it is certainly worth the trouble!  Too many people think it can’t happen to them, and with the amount of marketing power a website has, it is just not a chance worth taking.

How to Choose the Host with the Most – Reasonable Features with a Reasonable Price

Quality service, support and equipment should be primary and non negotiable.  For most people their website is a strong part of their business, and that should be protected at all costs.  Now we get to the features.  It is so easy to get blown away in the endless sea of hosting features and make the assumption that if a company offers that many features, then the price is right.  “What?  1000 Mbps, Unlimited Email, OsCommerce, Fantastico and all that stuff for ONLY $16.00 a month?  What a great deal!” I see it all the time.  Meanwhile a company that offers the same features and better service at a lower rate was just one click away on the Google results.

The important thing to remember is that if you don’t or won’t need the feature, then don’t pay for it.  If you have a company with five employees and never plan to expand past 20, then you do not HAVE to have unlimited email accounts.  Likewise, if you just use your website as an online business card and never plan to make a bulletin board or use a shopping cart then there is no point in looking for those features.  I am not suggesting that you forsake any company that has seemingly limitless features.  This is just a note to be cautious and make sure that you can’t find a better deal on pricing as long as the hosting company has the things you absolutely need or think you may need in the future.

Make sure to analyze your business needs and plan for the features that may be required.  If you are planning to make a dynamic website then be sure to select a host that has the appropriate server side programming versions that you will require. If you will need PHP Version 5 in the future, then do not go with a hosting company that only has Version 3.  In addition be sure to look for a host that has different package levels, so that in the event you do expand or downsize you can adjust your level of features to control cost.  As long as you follow those guidelines you should always at least have an option.

How to Choose the Host with the Most – Features to Look For

I typically look for hosting companies to work with that provide support with their script installation along with any technical server issues that arise.  Let’s face it, not every single person (even web developers) knows how to use all of the scripts that come in the features of the hosting package.  Sometimes the hosting package will come with instructions that are located in the scripts library, but if you can find a company that offers actual telephone support regarding the scripts, then you have struck gold.

Another critical feature that I look for is reporting.  I want to have the capability at all times to monitor how many visitors I am getting, how long they stayed, and from which website or search engine they found my site.  This is absolutely critical if you plan to do an Internet marketing campaign or optimize your website.  There are outside companies that can gather and provide those statistics, but that usually requires scripts being installed on each webpage, and has a tendency to slow the site down.  That is why I recommend making sure that the statistics feature is available and inherent on the server where you website will be hosted.

Those are the important factors in choosing the appropriate host. More often than not, it is the service level and equipment that differentiate one host from another.  Better to pay more and receive the quality you need, than pay less and end up spending all of your valuable time trying to get some service.  I hope this article helps you plan right and avoid the issues that so many have encountered.  Thanks for taking the time to read it!

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How to Choose the Host with the Most

May 1, 2008 | Filed Under Web Hosting Articles | Comments Off 

Are You Ready to Offer a New Service?

Are You Ready to Offer a New Service?

Businesses often need to grow in order to survive, and web hosting businesses are no exception. One way to grow your business is by adding a new service. This article discusses some points to consider if you are thinking about expanding in this direction.Many web hosts are expanding their businesses with new packages, new services, upgrades to existing services, more capacity, and so on. It seems as if companies post press releases about this kind of growth almost daily. Maybe in this competitive field, you’ve been feeling the pressure. Are you ready to add another service offering?

If you don’t think you are, maybe you need to examine your reasons. (Don’t worry, I’ll talk to those of you who are in just a minute!). You might be holding back out of fear. Are you afraid that you might not be able to manage the new service? Or that what you’d like to add won’t fit in with the rest of your offerings? Maybe you’re so afraid it will fail that you can’t take that first step. Or maybe you believe you don’t have the resources, and as a result you will be stretched too thin and shortchange your customers.

All of those are valid concerns, but you should not let them paralyze you. With so many web hosts chasing customers and coming up with new ways to serve them, the fear of failure can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This doesn’t mean you should rush right into doing something new, of course! But if you step back and take some time to think about it, you can roll out a new service that will make sense as a part of what you already offer.

Not convinced? One management consultancy insists that businesses need to create a “revenue octopus” for the sake of their own security. Joel G. Block, founder of Growth-Logic, says that “You need around eight different revenue-generation streams.” One successful stream can support a company, but it’s very risky to depend on it.

Ready to start thinking about what else you can do for your customers now? Good. You might not be quite sure where to start. It’s right in front you: start with what you do best.

Are You Ready to Offer a New Service? – How Does it Fit?

You might start by going back to your business plan. If you don’t have one, write one now, as simple or detailed as you want. Make sure it shows you your company as it currently exists. For example, let’s say you host mainly small business websites that use their online presence to drive customers to their stores. You are thinking about giving your customers the option of using a software package that will allow them to make sales over the Internet. How will that change your business plan?

There is a lot to think about here. Does the software package build appropriately on what you already have in place? Do you have the resources to handle an increase in e-commerce being conducted on the sites you host – and how much of an increase? Look not only to your hardware and bandwidth, but your own skills and those of your employees.

Will this addition be cost effective? Does it build on what you already have in place, or are you going to have to acquire a lot more resources (hardware, software, people with particular skill sets) that don’t fit in with the rest of your company? To quote Joel Block again, “If you have to spend an inordinate amount of time getting another part of your business up and running, then you’re using up valuable resources.” You don’t want to start from scratch; you want to make sure those eight revenue streams are related.

If you are the kind of person who needs to see it all in front of you, this might be a good time to sit down with a pen and paper (or a computer and a spreadsheet) and start making some educated guesses as to numbers to crunch. Research other companies that have offerings similar to the new service you want to add. What are their prices? Can you match or beat them?

According to Michael Holigan, owner of a $15 million business that includes a service-based website, it’s very important, when considering a new offering, to “sit down with a piece of paper and figure out your upside and downside. Come up with worst-case and best-case scenarios…you really need to go in understanding the risk factor and how much liability you can afford to take.”

This will help you decide whether a new service offering that you want to add to your business will work, and fit in with what you have. What if you want to come up with a new offering, but you find yourself genuinely stumped? Say you’ve been offering your customers the same thing for so long you don’t know what else makes sense. Keep reading.

Are You Ready to Offer a New Service? – Know What the Customer Wants

To start with, if you’re stumped about what to offer next, you have a problem. It means that you may have lost touch with your customers. If you touch base with your customers regularly, you will know what they need and want – and many of them will be quite up front about any products or services you don’t offer that they would really like. If your customers have told you that they need something new – like the ability to support certain scripts on their websites, perhaps – listen to them. Your bottom line is depending on it.

By the same token, if you’re coming up with this new service yourself, think about how your customers will benefit. If they can’t see what they will get out of the new service – or you can’t show them – it could be a real waste of time and resources. Will the service cost less than what you have in place now? Will it offer your customers better results?

Consider, too, what effect this new service will have on your ability to serve your customers. Will it allow you to host more sites? Host fewer sites, but with more features? Going back to our example of the e-commerce software package, you might find that you cannot host as many accounts because of hardware, bandwidth, and security needs, but with fewer clients, perhaps you can offer your customers more personalized service – and you might be able to charge a little more as a result. You might find that the new offering makes sense as part of an add-on or premium package.

Remember that it comes down to your customers. Is this really what they want? To quote Holigan again, “I think the main thing is to watch your customer base. Can you diversify with your existing customer base?” It’s important to maintain that focus. By keeping an eye on his customer base, Holigan knows that “there are certain things I can do and other things I should never get into.”

Are You Ready to Offer a New Service? – Is the Timing Right?

When it comes to unveiling a new service offering, timing is akin to location in real estate. So ask yourself: why this particular offering, and why this particular time? What is pushing your decision in this direction at this time? Is it really the right time? These may all sound like the same question, but when timing can mean the difference between success and failure, it makes sense to be sure.

Especially if you’re the sole proprietor of your business, you need to think about whether the timing is right for you. You also need to think about what you’ll be getting out of it. How will it improve what you’re doing now? Will you get additional income out of it? Or will you have more free time, or more mobility? Maybe it lets you go into an area that is more interesting to you. Yes, it is important to serve your customers, but you should get some definable personal benefits out of it, too.

There are other ways in which timing is important. For example, you need to make sure you give your customers adequate notice of the new offering. If rolling out the new service is going to affect your current service (and don’t think it won’t), make sure your customers are aware of how they will be affected. Will you be less available for a while as you take care of setting it up? Will your prices increase? Customers deserve to know what’s going on and why; when they do, they are much more likely to understand as you deal with the issues involved in ramping up.

While you’re keeping your customers in the loop about how these changes will affect them, be sure to let them know how excited you are to be offering the new service. In fact, share the news with everyone you know. Your view of the change will influence what your customers think of the change, and how they will respond to it.

Make sure you have a marketing campaign together. While you were number crunching, I hope you made some projections and figured out a way to measure your results. You will need this information to help you determine whether you are on track.

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May 1, 2008 | Filed Under Web Hosting Articles | Comments Off 

Choosing a Web Host, Get What You Need

Choosing a Web Host, Get What You Need

Setting up and maintaining web servers can be an expensive and complicated undertaking for any company. There are countless technologies that you need to be ready to set up immediately. If you need to get a site live quickly or cheaply, it can be nearly impossible to do it yourself. Outsourcing these tasks to professional web hosters can save money and headaches. But there are so many hosts. How can somebody choose between them?So you have decided that you need a web page. Setting up your own server can waste your time and money when there are so many hosts ready to put your site on internet. The problem is that there are so many, and to some shoppers, there is a lot of technical jargon that can get in the way of picking the right one. This article is meant to simplify matters a bit by giving a reasonable way to gauge a web host’s value, not to promote any particular hosts.

The most important step to choosing a host is the first one. You must decide exactly what you need the web page to do. This will determine exactly what you need from a host. Ask yourself a few questions:

  1. Is this going to be a business, organization, or personal site?
  2. How devastating is it to me, my business, or my organization if the website is offline for several hours every month?
  3. Will this site need to sell things or will it possibly sell things in the future?
  4. Will it need forums, hit counters, or other server side scripts?

There are more factors in what will determine the best host for you, but this touches on most of them. Primarily, you will need to assess hosts in four areas: reliability, features, customer support, and finally price.

If this is a personal website that is just for fun, you may not need anything more than the webspace that comes included with your ISP service (AOL, Verizon, Adelphia, etc.). You may even be happy with free services. However, for those with a more serious need for a website, like a business or organization or archive of information, those kind of sites can be insufficient. Sometimes their terms of service even prohibit commercial use on those types of servers. For most purposes beyond a personal page, you will need to look at commercial hosting solutions.

Choosing a Web Host, Get What You Need – Reliability

Of those factors we need to consider, let’s first look at reliability. No web host can have 100% uptime, and it’s impossible to guarantee. Avoid any hosts promising more than they can deliver. Any number of factors can take the system offline, including routine maintenance or server upgrades. The ideal is to reduce the amount of downtime so your site can be minimally impacted. Also, hosts can be slow during peak times, which may frustrate and turn away visitors, but this can be a harder thing to determine than uptime.

The importance of reliability goes back to how you answered the question concerning how devastating downtime can be. Consider that a search engine can be crawling sites any time. If your site is down, it will not be indexed. Search engines often make a few attempts to spider a page that existed before, but if your server is unreliable, your search engine ranking may be as well.

More seriously, if your website is any form of business, downtime can kill it. If for instance you sell bikes on the page, visitors coming to shop or research bikes on your site are all lost when the site is down. With so many sites selling bikes online that are only a click away, it’s very easy to lose a sale. There are not many things about a website that can truly indicate the professionalism of a company, but an unreliable website will definitely warn people of an unreliable businesses.

Also, if your site relies on advertising to make money, downtime means that you have no money coming in. Visitors mean ad impressions and click-throughs. Without them, your income will dry up as well as your advertisers.

So, for any online business, uptime is critical. You absolutely cannot go with a host that has an uptime of less than 95%. Some people recommend staying with hosts promising at least 99% uptime. Often hosts will offer a guaranteed uptime and will refund all or part of your monthly fee if they fall below it. You will often pay more for a host with this promise, but it can be worth the extra money you may spend. Those hosts have a vested interest in keeping your site online and profitable.

For organizations, like non-profit groups, reliability depends on what the website is designed to do for your visitors. It is not as critical to be online all the time as it is for ecommerce, but certainly you don’t want to be stuck with an unreliable host making your organization look bad or keeping visitors away.

If your site is of a personal nature, reliability is as important as you make it. You could deal with a cheap host that is slow during peak times or even is offline now and then. Your livelihood is not dependant on it, so try to weigh reliability a little less than other factors.

Choosing a Web Host, Get What You Need – Features

Features can often be either necessary of frivolous. One often frivolous feature people weigh too heavily is the amount of web space available. The average website is 2 to 3 MB. Most websites will never be able to exceed the range of 5 to 10 MB in size. Although this doesn’t sound like much, consider that a website can be nothing more than some text files, images, and a little flash or java code. A large website can easily be made in far less than 5 MB. Avoid paying more for large amounts of web space unless you intend to use your website for downloading or streaming media, such as videos and audio. Often, web hosts advertise that they offer 300 MB for example, while they know you will only ever use 5 MB. Do not let large amounts of space sell you; you will likely end up paying for empty space.

A factor that is more important to consider is the bandwidth that your site will need. If you are just starting your site, traffic will be low until you start getting more links and search engine listings. Once your site gets more popular, your web space provider may shut off your site (or send you an extra bill) for letting people load your site more times than your plan had included. Make sure you know how much bandwidth you have and find out if you can purchase extra bandwidth later when your site gets more traffic. As a general guide, if your site does not use streaming or downloadable media, 3 GB of bandwidth should be sufficient unless you become very popular. Also, avoid any “unlimited” bandwidth deals; the web host has to pay for that bandwidth, and nothing is free.

If you are paying for a website, you should definitely be getting email accounts and FTP access. Don’t settle for a site without them. Make sure the email addresses are for your domain (i.e. contact@bikeshop.com) and not at your host’s domain (i.e. contact-bikeshop@myhost.com). Also, the host should support autoresponders. FTP access is critical is you intend to do any amount of uploading files to your server. Don’t settle for web applications. Also, you will want a host that provides a user control over these two features. It’s too much hassle to get customer service to change a password or set up properties, so find one that automates this for you.

If you plan to sell things on your site, you will definitely need a server with SSL (security features), MySQL, and an included shopping cart. This will necessitate a high priced plan, but they are necessary technologies for most online businesses. Even if you don’t need the immediately, you may want to add them in the future.

If you have any interest in using server side scripts, check what kind of server the host is using. If you plan to use Microsoft’s ASP technologies, you will need a Windows server. However, if you have no specific plans to use those, a Linux, Unix, OpenBSD, or other open source server will probably be more flexible for you. You will also want to check if Perl, CGI, PHP, SSI and others can be used on the server. Most likely, if you plan to implement these technologies, you or somebody on staff should know what to look for. If your site is a straight forward website with nothing very fancy, don’t worry about it.

Choosing a Web Host, Get What You Need – Customer Support and Price

Customer Support

For casual sites like personal and hobby ones, customer support isn’t a big factor, though it is nice to have somebody there to guide you through anything. But for commercial websites, perhaps one of the most important factors in choosing a paid host is the service. Most hosts have email support, but keep an eye out for hosts that have phone numbers listed. These are obviously more valuable. Though some hosts have excellent turn around on email service requests, there’s no substitute for actually being able to talk to somebody if you need to. Also, be certain that the service is available 24/7, even on holidays. There’s no telling when your site may run into trouble and you need somebody to look into it.

You can do a bit to research the speed and quality of customer service. First, if you have the email and phone number available, use them. Send them an email with a small inquiry to see how fast you get a response and how well they answered your question. Also, call the phone number to see if you connect to a person or a machine, and see how long you have to hold. However, one of the best ways to judge the service is through customer reviews.

Also remember that customer support goes hand in hand with price. The less you pay, the less can go toward keeping somebody skilled in server support available to help you.

Price

The cost of web service can vary from free to more than fifty dollars a month, depending on the company and the services. Don’t let price be the primary factor in your decision unless you are launching a personal page. For ecommerce, businesses and organizations, the quality of the service is more important.

Keep in mind that the most expensive plan is not necessarily the best, and the biggest name company may not be the right match for you. Established web hosters are naturally more expensive than smaller companies with similar service. You can get good hosting for a lower price, but it come with a risk that the host isn’t as good as you planned or they may go out of business.

Also, be aware of resellers. Resellers buy space from a larger company and do not host their own sites. Their services can be much cheaper than even the companies they lease space from, but there are potential drawbacks. If you make a customer service request, it must be routed through them to the actual host, making the requests take longer. Resellers can be good companies, but make sure you look into them and those who they are buying space from.

If your website is important, beware of cheap plans, free plans, and some reseller plans. Your website may end up on a server with a lot of other sites. How fast your site responds will be influenced by the traffic on the other sites hosted with yours. You can ask your hosting company what other sites are being hosted with yours.

Before You Commit

Before dealing with a host, you will want to find user opinions on them. Keep in mind, no host can please everybody all of the time. Some people have very high expectation and become irate if issues are not fixed immediately. On the other hand, you may notice recurring problems with particular companies, or you may notice there are more complaints than praise. Take note of this.

One resource for finding user opinions and inquiring about hosts, as well as finding hosts, is our own web hosting related forums (forums.devshed.com). On that site, you will see several forums related to web hosting midway down.

Only caution you may use: hosts often have reduced prices for plans if you sign up for a year. If you are uncertain of the host, you may want to stick to monthly or quarterly terms until you trust them.

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Choosing a Web Host, Get What You Need

May 1, 2008 | Filed Under Web Hosting Articles | Comments Off 

The Top Web Servers in the Market

The Top Web Servers in the Market

This article gives you an idea of what a Web server is and what it does, and discusses the top Web servers in the market. What makes a “top” Web server? The key aspects include scalability, speed, security, availability and support for dynamic modules.

What is a Web Server?

Your business runs around the clock and around the world. Your employees and your clients need access to information stored your company’s computers. With Web server software you can set up a secure and dedicated server that provides access to anyone who needs that information at their finger tips.

The two simple words “Web server” express a lot of concepts. Here are some of them:

I hope the above has gone some way toward explaining what a Web server is and what it does.

In simple words, a Web server receives requests from several clients (web browsers or other applications) around the world and responds  with information in the form of a Web page. If a Web server needs to do something to process the request, such as access a database, this is known as server side processing. If no processing takes place at the Web server, then it will directly render the item — as with HTML in the form of Web pages, or Web downloads such as .zip files.

Some times, Web server software will be configured in a dedicated manner on a single piece of hardware to serve requests. This specific computer, then, would be called a Web server (from the view of network design considerations). These types of Web servers may also be part of a cluster to provide high availability and speed.

The Top Web Servers in the Market – The Top Web Servers

Some of the most popular Web servers include the following:

  1. Apache Web Server
  2. Zeus Web Server
  3. Internet Information Server (IIS)
  4. iPlanet Web Server
  5. Roxen Web Server
  6. Jigsaw
  7. Sambar Server
  8. Sun Java System Web Server

Apache Web Server

Apache is a free, fully configurable Web server available for Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS and other operating systems. It is one of the world’s most popular Web servers; many people work on improving it all the time. This server can be very difficult for the novice to install, but there are now companies that offer support plans and assistance to keep your sever up, running, and secure.

Zeus Web Server

Zeus Web Server is the most scalable, high-performance Web server software available, underpinning business-critical solutions for the world’s leading Web hosting, content provider and secure e-commerce companies. Flexible Web-based management, extensive integration capabilities, and the most comprehensive range of features available from commercial server software, combine to provide fully extensible and future-proof Web-based solutions. It can be a lot more expensive than Apache, but for the price, you get a lot of service and functionality.

Internet Information Server (IIS)

IIS is one of the most popular Web servers available for Windows. It is a powerful server with lots of applications and functions. Certain applications, such as ASP, are built into the server. If you use this server, you need to be very careful to stay up-to-date on patches and security. Hackers like to target this server, which can make your site vulnerable if it is not up-to-date.

The Top Web Servers in the Market – iPlanet Web Server

iPlanet Web server is the latest offering from the people who brought you the Netscape Web server. It is secure and offers flexibility, such as Java Servlet capabilties. It is a very popular Web server for enterprises.

Roxen Web Server

Roxen Web server is a free, open-source Web server similar in features to Apache. It offers many of the features that Apache offers, but it is primarily a tool to get you to buy other Roxen products. It has good integration with the Roxen site tools, but those are not cheap, and most of the advanced functionality of the server requires that you buy them.

Jigsaw

Jigsaw is not a server meant for enterprise-level Web sites. But if you are interested in playing with cutting-edge technologies on your Web server, then this is the server to get. Jigsaw is a free, Java-based Web server with applet-based administration tools that make it easy to use. It is meant to showcase the latest technologies, and because of this it can be less stable than other commercial servers.

Sambar Server

It is very difficult to find a server that is both free and this easy to use and install. The Sambar Server supports a wide variety of applications, and if you want more functionality, you can program your own APIs in C or C++. The server is reliable, not, perhaps as reliable as the Unix/Apache Web system, but certainly reliable enough for the average small to mid-sized business.

Sun Java System Web Server

Formerly the Sun ONE Web server, the Sun Java System Web server provides a powerful and scalable business Web server solution. It even supports ASP, CGI, ColdFusion and PHP. It is more reliable and responsive than Apache (http://www.sun.com/software/products/web_srvr/whats_new.html ).

The Top Web Servers in the Market – Which OS Should You Use With Your Web Server?

If your website gets (or you anticipate that it will get) a large amount of page views on a regular basis, then you should investigate Web servers that can handle this load. Servers should be scalable and able to adjust to changing levels of requests. Good servers will also have load-balancing capabilities and offer functionality to continue to serve pages even under extreme conditions.

Unix and Linux are two of the most popular operating systems for Web servers. It is generally agreed that the Unix family of operating systems are generally more secure than any other OS. They are also scalable for serving lots of page views.

Windows 2000/2003 and NT are also popular choices for Web server operating systems. They offer a familiar interface for IT managers and can be easier to install and set up than Unix Web servers. You should be very careful when using servers on these operating systems, however. Some of the more popular servers are also prime targets for hackers. Servers on Windows are also often not as scalable for serving lots of page views.

But Microsoft claims that Windows 2003 server is much more secure than any other Windows OS. In general, if you always upgrade to the latest service packs and patches, the chances of risk are quite low.

Besides the Windows server, Microsoft also offers ISA server (Internet Security and Accelerator server), which makes the Windows server highly secure. In addition to security, it offers server side caching for the Web, which in turn, improves responsiveness.

Let us consider a small example. Say we developed an application using .NET platform with SQL Server as the database. In this situation, the development platform, deployment platform, database, and Web server are tightly integrated with native Windows architecture. It is always suggested to use the Windows platform to support these types of situations. Similarly, if the whole development platform is on Java, it is best to select the Sun Java System Web Server (or other related product).

But all platforms have their own pros and cons. To be frank, none of them are perfect in every respect. Depending on our own needs,  scalability, and other future issues, we generally settle upon one environment. Even so, sometimes a mixed environment is an excellent choice to solve some of the core issues. For example, you can arrange to have a Linux server as a firewall and use a Windows-based Web server as well.

The Top Web Servers in the Market – A Survey of Web Server Technologies

It is difficult to deduce anything, especially when different surveys of Web technologies give you different answers. The best I could do is give you a few links to such surveys, which you can analyze and then use to make your own decision for what will best suit your situation.

Early on, it was no surprise that Apache was the dominant Web server in the market. But recent surveys state that Microsoft IIS has stolen Apache’s crown, at least in production usage. For detailed technical results of the survey, I suggest the link: http://www.port80software.com/surveys/top1000webservers/.

But another survey claims that Apache still dominates IIS. For more information, point your browser to this link:  http://www.serverwatch.com/stats/sspace/article.php/3394751

This link features a more generic survey on almost all types of technologies related to Web: http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/

Finally, another survey worth checking can be found here:  http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html

I hope I’ve shed some light on your choices when it comes to Web servers.

Article Source :

The Top Web Servers in the Market

May 1, 2008 | Filed Under Web Hosting Articles | Comments Off 

How to Pick a Free Web Hosting

How to Pick a Free Web Host

You finally decided to build your own Web site, but you don’t want to spend a lot of money to have it hosted by someone else, and you don’t want to host it yourself. What do you do? There are a lot of free Web hosting firms, each with their pluses and minuses. Krissi Danielson explains what to expect from a free Web host, how to choose one, and the pros and cons of using some of the better known free Web hosts.It may be true that there’s “no free lunch in this world” and that “you get what you pay for,” but it’s still nice to get stuff for free. This is certainly true of Web hosting. While you can expect a higher quality of service and feature packages from paid Web hosts in nearly all cases, free Web hosts still serve a fun and important purpose for personal Web pages and hobby sites. In addition, they offer a great way to put up a site and build a regular readership without spending any money; you can always switch to a paid host later on.

There are a bazillion sites out there offering free Web hosting. If you type in a query on “free host” from Google, you are likely to be swamped with results that include everything from the big names like Yahoo Geocities and Tripod to obscure specialty sites. Each one has a different package offering in terms of available space, permitted traffic, allowable file types, and other features. It can be overwhelming to try to pick the right host to meet your needs. What should you be looking for?

How to Pick a Free Web Host – How sites offer hosting for free

As mentioned above, there really is no free lunch. By choosing a free Web host, you are going to have to accept some form of advertising. This is how the free hosts make their money. In most cases, the advertising comes in the form of a banner or pop-up ad on your site.

Before signing up for a free Web host, it is a good idea to check exactly what type of advertising to expect. Obviously, embedded banner ads on your site will be far less annoying to your visitors than popup ads. However, even some embedded banner ad hosts may be better than others. Check to see whether you can be allowed to control the placement of the banner, for example. If you can put the banner at the bottom of the page, that could be preferable to being forced to run the banner ad at the top.

Regardless of whether the host offers banner ads or popups, it is also a wise move to visit some other sites hosted by the particular company you are considering. Most hosts have a directory or list of featured “showcase” sites on their home pages. Looking at these lets you get an idea of the types of ads you can expect to appear on your site.

If you find a host that claims it will not require you to run ads on your site, the site may require you to click on banners in its file manager page as its alternate way of making money. However, you will want to check the fine print very carefully in the terms of agreement. Some hosts that offer ad-free free Web hosting may be collecting your email address and selling it off to marketing firms that send unsolicited commercial email. In this case, it’s possible to set up a dummy email account just to get the free space, but you may be better off accepting the banner ad. If you very strongly wish to avoid banner ads, you are probably better off investigating a low-cost paid host. There are hosts out there that charge as little as $5 per month for a reasonable amount of Web space.

How to Pick a Free Web Host – Making sense of features

The most obvious feature you want to look for in selecting a free Web host is the amount of space available. Most hosts offer anywhere from 2 MB of storage space to a gigabyte or more. If you will be hosting streaming media files or large graphic files on your site, you should look for the maximum amount of space you can find. If, however, you are just looking for a place to put up a home page with a few HTML pages and simple graphics, the chances are slim that you will need more than 5-10 MB of space for your site.

Another important feature to look at is the allowable traffic. This usually is expressed in terms like “data transfer” or bandwidth. This refers to the amount of traffic your site can take. If you expect your site is going to have thousands of visitors, you will want to look for a host with unlimited traffic. For simpler Web pages, it is unlikely that you would bump up against the usual limits, such as the 3 GB data transfer limit on free Geocities Web pages.

Consider, as well, how you intend to generate your site. Do you like the idea of creating your pages and posting them on your site through a site-building interface? If so, you will want to look for site building and creation tools when choosing a free host. On the other hand, if you prefer to code your HTML by hand or use a tool such as Dreamweaver to create HTML files on your PC before posting them to the Internet, you may want to look for a Web host that allows FTP file transfer.

A less apparent but still important factor is the formatting of the URL for your free Web space. The best type of URL is probably a subdomain, which would let you have a URL like http://yourspace.freehost.com. Most of the leading free hosts do not offer subdomains, however, so it’s more likely to expect a URL like http://www.freehost.com/yourspace, which is not too unwieldy. Watch out for hosts that give you convoluted URLs like http://www.freehost.com/members/subdirectory1/subdirectory2/
~yourspace. You don’t want a URL that’s going to take you forever to type, not to mention that if you are using the site for anything other than a hobby, shorter URLs tend to make a better impression on your visitors.

Beyond the above items, most features within free hosts are fairly standard. Here are some other things to look for:

Warning signals of sites to avoid

As mentioned above, free Web hosts are a dime a dozen and the features are different among all of them, but even if you find two hosts with an equal feature set, that doesn’t mean the hosts are equally good options.

The biggest risk you run when choosing a free host is that the host may go out of business, taking your site with it. This is also true of inexpensive paid hosts, to an extent. It’s wise to always keep backups of your files on your own computer, but who wants to be changing URLs all the time every time a host goes out of business? For this reason, it can be a good idea to stick with a company that has a proven track record and has been around for a few years rather than a company you haven’t heard of.

How to Pick a Free Web Host – Some popular free Web hosts

Free Web hosts have been around almost as long as the Internet has been a force in society. Here are some of the most popular hosts that have been around for a number of years and thus stood the test of time:

1) Geocities (http://www.geocities.com)

Geocities was one of the original free Web hosts. It started off with different themed “cities” that allowed people to build personal Web pages within themed groups with addresses. It was hugely popular and was later purchased by Yahoo, and today Geocities is Yahoo’s free Web space business. These days, Geocities also offers paid hosting for fairly low rates.

Pros

Cons

2) Tripod (http://www.tripod.com)

Tripod, like Geocities, has been around for years. It is now owned by Lycos and serves as the company’s free Web hosting branch.

Pros

Cons

3) FortuneCity (http://www.fortunecity.com)

Another old-school host, FortuneCity offers a free Web hosting plan followed by a series of paid plans with increasing space and features.

Pros

Cons

4) Doteasy (http://www.doteasy.com)

Doteasy isn’t as big of a name as Tripod or Geocities, but it is a growing force in the free Web hosting space. It targets domain owners and does not require banner ads.

Pros

Cons

5) Angelfire (http://www.angelfire.com)

Angelfire has been around for years and is the Web hosting arm of Lycos.

Pros

Cons

Article Source :

How to Pick a Free Web Host

May 1, 2008 | Filed Under Web Hosting Articles | Comments Off 

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