Top Ten Reasons to Choose a Web Hosting Provider
Choosing a web hosting provider is different for everyone. Every website has a specific set of needs and you have to find a web host that provides the needs that are specific to your website.
However, there are certain things to look for when choosing a web-hosting service. In this article I will give you the ten most common things people should be looking for. These are not necessarily in the order of priority, because as I said every website has different needs and your priorities might not be the same as the next website owner.
1. Tech Support: Tech support in any business venture is always important. As a website owner though, the tech support that your web-hosting service provides is going to be crucial to your business. If your website is offline or not working properly it will cost you sales.
If you have been buying traffic to your website and it goes offline, you are still being charged for all of those visits to your website, which they never saw. The money you are spending on your ad campaign, AdWords program or other traffic sources is going right down the drain. You cannot afford to choose a web host that does not respond quickly when you have a problem.
2. Feedback Forums: A web host that provides a forum, message board, or chat room to discuss hosting issues or to get help in is more likely to get a user to use their web-hosting services. The reason behind this is people feel more comfortable with a web host that gives a personal touch and one that cares enough to provide a higher level of service.
3. Room to Grow: If your web-hosting service only offers one package, it’s a bad sign in most cases. What happens as your web business grows and so do your web hosting needs? If they offer upgrades to dedicated servers, larger storage and bandwidth plans, and a lot of other options, then you can feel confident choosing them as your web hosting provider. You don’t plan to stay small and your web host shouldn’t plan for you to stay small either.
4. Storage Space: This is usually only an issue with websites that will be offering users a lot of downloads such as music or software. The average website can get by with about 10 megabytes of storage, but again you want room to grow, plus you can actually use your storage to back up files from your computer. Don’t backup secure documents there, but a lot of your files can be backed up online. You have storage so use it. The more storage space they offer, the better.
5. Bandwidth or Transfer: This is the size of every file visitors to your website download automatically to their computers each time they visit. The average webpage is around 30k and then you add the graphics and other files that are displayed to the user and you get your bandwidth or transfer usage. The average website can get by on less than 10 gigabytes of bandwidth per month. However if you are offering downloads like software, music, and movies, or you are going to be driving a lot of traffic to your website, you may want to choose a plan that offers you more bandwidth. Make sure your webhosting provider has options that give you room to grow here as well.
6. Easy to use Control Panel: Cpanel is one of the most popular control panels for web hosts to offer, but there are others. Ask what type of control panel your web host is offering to provide you with. Again, this need is different for everyone and this is based on your level of expertise. Some advanced users would rather not have or don’t care about control panels because they know how to configure everything in the server by themselves. Less advanced users need to be sure they pick a web hosting service that provides an easier interface so they can feel comfortable making the alterations they need to their website.
7. FrontPage extensions: A lot of people that do not know HTML still use FrontPage or other programs to design their websites with. If you use FrontPage, you need to make sure your web host is set up for FrontPage extensions.
8. Type of Servers: An example of this is websites that will be built using the .NET framework or ASP. For your website you will need to make sure your web host has a windows based server. Most web hosting providers are on Linux or Apache and ASP websites will not function on them. A better choice is to stay away from building a website that requires a windows server in the first place.
9. Added Features: Instant Install is a feature offered by most web hosts these days even if they call it another name. It’s an automated process for installing databases and database driven features you can add to your website like photo galleries, forums, blogs, content management systems, calendars, guestbooks, and more. It’s just as easy to choose a web-hosting provider that gives you these features in case you need them as it is to choose one that doesn’t. Again, room to grow is important.
10. Is your web host a good neighborhood: This one is a little more difficult to explain and find out about but it is important. Some search engines punish websites who are in a bad neighborhood. They do this by banning websites that come from a particular set of IP addresses due to previous problems with websites on those IP addresses. You need to see samples of other websites that are hosted by your web hosting service. If a lot of them are warez websites, porn websites, file sharing websites, or other websites whose activities do not seem to savory, then you may be looking at a bad neighborhood and may want to find another web host.
That’s my top 10 tips for choosing a web hosting service. I hope you find these tips helpful when you look for where to host your next website!
D. David Dugan recommends the web hosting solutions offered by DD&C at http://hosting.dugancom.com Hosting popular sites like the article directory http://www.acceleratedtraffic.com is one of their specialties.
How To Switch Hosting Providers Without Downtime
To many the idea of moving your web site from one host to another can sometimes seem like a daunting task but the process of moving your site is simple when you know what steps to take and the order to take them in. This article will walk you through the steps required to perform a site move without the downtime.
Firstly there is this one important thing you need to remember, DO NOT TERMINATE YOUR EXISTING HOSTING ACCOUNT until the very last step. You may be very unhappy with your current hosting but it is essential that your current hosting account remains active until you are 100% sure your site is all operational with the new hosting provider.
If you follow the steps below you should be able to transition from one host to another without any downtime to your web site.
Create A New Account
Firstly you need to choose your new hosting provider, once you have chosen that provider sign up for the chosen hosting package and once the new account is setup you can move on to the next step.
Backup All Your Files From Your Old Account
This is a relatively simple process, but can be time consuming depending on the size of your web site. Go to your old hosting account and download all the files via FTP, and backup any databases in use. Remember that you cannot cancel this account yet even though you have backed up all your files.
Upload All Your Files To Your New Account
Once you have backed up your files on your old hosting account, it is time to go to your new hosting account and upload the backups via the new hosts FTP.
Create Your Mail Accounts
To avoid losing any of your email when you later change your domain name server addresses, it is imperative that you now create all the same email accounts that you had with your old hosting provider in your new hosting account. Once this has been done, all email addresses on the new account should match the email address on your old account.
Checking of Your Files and Links
Now it is time to check all the pages of your web sites and verify that all links are working correctly on your new host. To do this you will need to create a temporary URL to the web site. A quick and easy way to do this is to create a sub domain of another URL and point it to your new web site by the way of mirroring. Any good web hosting provider should provide you with the ability to create temporary a URL so you can test your new site.
Changing Your DNS (Domain Name Server)
If you are now certain that your files have all been uploaded correctly and the links within your site are working correctly, you can change your DNS (domain name servers). Your new host should have provided you with their DNS settings. If they have not, contact them and ask what addresses should be used for your domain name. Usually the addresses will look like this, ns1.domainname.com, ns2.domainname.com.
The place to change the DNS addresses is whoever your domain name is registered with. If you registered the domain name through a registrar, you will need to login to their control panel and change the DNS servers there. If it was registered with your old host, you will need to login to their control panel and change the DNS entries there.
Wait For DNS Changes To Propogate
After you have changed your DNS (domain name servers) you will need to wait between 24-48 hours for your domain to propogate across the internet. During this waiting period your site will still be served from your old hosting account, as the DNS propogates your site will be served from your new host. Once the propogation has completed all requests to your domain will be served from you new host.
Cancel Your Old Account
Make sure you wait at least 48 hours for the domain name to propogate, and make sure that your domain name is resolving to your new hosting account before cancelling your old account.
Final Words
By following these steps you should now have successfully transferred your web site from your old host to your new host without any downtime.
David J. Smith writes about a new hosting company called Hostmonster and other prominent web hosting providers at http://www.webhost-advisor.com.
Understanding the Shared Webhosting
This article is intended for online newbies.
If you are thinking of starting online home based business, shared webhsoting is the best option. Shared webhosting is an ideal for new online starters, individuals or small-to-medium scale businesses that cannot afford to have fast connection to the internet for their web site on their own. This is where the shared webhosting businesses come in. They provide the customers a way to outsource their Internet requirements in a more affordable way. Shared webhosting is housing and serving files for a web site.
Individuals and companies are allowed to share the cost of a fast Internet connection for serving files in the shared webhosting service allows. This is the basic, entry-level fee-based hosting service available to the customer. With shared webhosting clients are allowed to host their website on a powerful server at a minimal affordable monthly cost. Shared webhosting provides individual sites with connectivity and guaranteed uptime. Shared webhosting is designed to host small-scale e-commerce sites web pages. Shared webhosting is commonly used by first-time webmasters because they can have a reliable Web presence without having advanced technical know-how. Shared webhosting is good for small-scale consumer because they are assured of transparent services, domain name for its website and set of email addresses.
Due to its low cost, it makes shared webhosting very attractive to the consumers. A minimal monthly fee for a shared webhosting service is preferable than a dial-up service. Most small-scale business and individuals prefer shared webhosting because of its low price and it provides basic services. Furthermore, shared webhosting popularity is its convenience of use. Site activation and set-up time in shared webhosting is fast, usually takes a few minutes after ordering the services.
Usually, Shared webhosting services are bundled. With a minimal monthly fee, it offers multi-platform website solutions. Bundled services that are more than even for your businesses include: limited amount of disk storage space for web pages, limited amount of monthly data transfer, email forwarding services with physical email boxes that allows you email aliases at your domain name, unlimited file transfer protocol (FTP) services. Shared webhosting alos provide access to Web statistics for you to gage the number of internet visitors visiting your web site. This service usually includes raw statistical logs and site statistics (how many visitors visited your site). Also, shared webhosting will include free 24X7 technical supports. Tips: more visitors will consume more space of your data transfer, and that would cause your server to crush. If you expect rapid growing number of your visitors (for example if you invest more in advertising), you should choose a service that offer more space. The best option is to upgrade your hosting plan.
Additional services in a shared webhosting are daily tape backup of web site, anonymous FTP server for you to provide public access via file transfer protocol format and CGI-BIN access to upload scripts that will add features to your website. Tips: daily backup is also important for your business success!
Again if you are a new online starter (commonly called newbie), shared webhosting is truly a great way to avail of fast internet connection for your website at a very minimal monthly cost. You can start your home based business with a small investment of less than 100 bucks. Visit my site to read more home based business tips and opportunities.
Copyright © Dr. Nophea Kim Phat, http://www.ActNowForProfits.com
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit =>http://www.ActNowForProfits.com
Unlimited Bandwidth is just a myth
How Much Bandwidth / Monthly Transfer Do You Need?
Bandwidth is the measurement of the amount of data transmitted over an internet connection in a given time. The majority of web hosting companies will set monthly limits. Some of these hosts will allow overselling which means your site will remain up but you receive a bill for the extra amount used others will simply pull the plug until next month.
Bandwidth explained:
Bandwidth is the amount of data transfer that you are allowed to have for a hosting package i.e. Let’s say you have a web page that is 48KB in size, now each time a user opens your site and goes to that page S/he downloads 48 KB of information on to their computer. If a 100 users view that page one time each then there has been a total of 4800 KB of data transferred from the server on which your files are stored for the computer of users.
Size of web Page: 48 KB
Number of users who viewed the web page: 100
Total amount of data transferred: 48KB * 100 = 4800 KB
Bandwidth is the term that is used to denote the amount of data that has been transferred from your web space.
The amount of bandwidth that you require while choosing a host depends on two factors:
1. The size of your site.
2. The popularity of your site.
If your site is not very big and you do not have any audio/video downloads and it’s not very popular i.e. not a lot of people visit your site then you do not really require a lot of bandwidth, on a average a web site uses up only 500 MB of bandwidth per month. Or if your site is small but extremely popular then you might have to go for a web hosting package that offers high bandwidth.
On the other hand if your web site is huge, providing audio/video downloads, as well as being very popular then you would certainly require a huge amount of bandwidth. Let’s say you have a video file that is 150 MB in size and in a single day a 100 visitors download the file. This means that 15 GB of bandwidth will have been used. If you multiply that by 30 days for the month it comes to 450 GB.
Unlimited Bandwidth
Many website hosting companies offer “unlimited bandwidth” as part of their web hosting packages.
It’s absolutely true, you can have unlimited bandwidth. However, you will need an unlimited amount of money by your side! Jokes apart, if you ever come across such a host it would be best to turn around and run back the way you came from.
Any web hosting company claiming “Unlimited Bandwidth” is simply lying. There’s no such thing as “Unlimited Bandwidth”.
In the real world, we’ve never seen any broadband company offering an internet connection as “Unlimited Megabytes Per Second.” So, how could a web hosting company, which normally doesn’t even own its own access lines, claims to customers that it will give them “Unlimited Bandwidth”? I have yet to come across a hard disk with unlimited disk space either.
Just think, if you can get unlimited bandwidth for $25-30 a month then why aren’t big companies like Sun, Microsoft etc. not hosted there? In fact, why isn’t everyone hosted there? For that matter, if unlimited is a standard feature then why don’t all website hosting companies offer it? Is it because the hardware is expensive? No, it’s because some hosts are honest and don’t give in to such gimmicks.
There are a lot of ways you can be duped by these ‘ unlimited’ hosts; here are just a few of them:
1. The secret of ‘unlimited’ is actually buried in the Terms of Service by the host. Do not be surprised to find that unlimited only equals 900mb or so .
2. The host may restrict the sort of files that you can host on their server. Generally image galleries and audio/video files attract a lot more downloads thereby resulting in higher bandwidth consumption. So if there are no files of this type, your site won’t really require a lot of bandwidth.
3. Some newly opened hosts use it as a scam. They take your money and after a few months when their server starts to become slow or reaches its limit, they run. with your money!
4. Some hosts outline in their Terms of Service that you can have unlimited bandwidth as long as you qualify for it. i.e. Your site must use less then, let’s say 2 GB of bandwidth in order to qualify for the unlimited bandwidth feature. As soon as your site goes over that limit they either start charging you for it or cut off your downloads altogether.
In life it’s absolutely true that you you always get what you pay for, and it’s no different for web hosting.
If a host is using a cheap advertising gimmick like ‘unlimited bandwidth’ they maybe lying about a few other things too.
In short: Website Hosting Companies offering “Unlimited Bandwidth” to attract customers need to be avoided. Most of the time, high bandwidth sites on these “Unlimited” plans will be disconnected, and no refund given or will end up with a large bill at the end of the month that they had not counted on. Normally, the web hosting company will simply say that the site violated its Acceptable Use Policy or Terms of Service.
So Why Do Unlimited Bandwidth Plans Exist?
Most websites only consume a very small amount of bandwidth and disk space. Web hosting companies that provide unlimited anything as a plan feature are banking on the fact that you won’t use very much. Unlimited is a marketing trick to get your business. The web hosting market is very competitive. Although selling plans that pretend to be unlimited can seem dishonest, it does not mean that the hosting company will not provide good service. Check in the hosting company’s Terms of Service: there will probably be a note about what “unlimited” really means.
When Are Unlimited Plans Ok?
If you have a small website and know that it will not consume too much space or bandwidth, then unlimited plans make your choices a bit easier to understand. Most plans that offer unlimited will have some restrictions such as no audio or video downloads. The reason audio or video downloads are typically not allowed in unlimited hosting plans is because these types of files consume significant bandwidth and disk space which exposes the host to the risk of having to add more hard drive space and bandwidth, which costs them more money. If you choose an unlimited plan and you know your needs won’t be very intensive then you won’t run into any problems.
When Are Unlimited Plans Not Ok?
If you intend to have a lot of visitors to your site, lots of downloads, including audio or video files, do not choose an unlimited plan hoping to get unrestricted bandwidth. You will find yourself with problems. Your web host is not going to run at a loss for long – they could shut down your website or even charge you extra (read the terms of service).
So What Is The Best Thing To Do?
The best course of action is to plan ahead. Remember, you can always buy more bandwidth or disk space if you need – often for just a few extra pounds
Only consider an unlimited hosting plan if you know your disk space and bandwidth requirements are very low. If, on the other hand, you have an ecommerce site or a site that you expect to grow in size and bandwidth in future, avoid any plans that offer unlimited bandwidth or disk space.
Remember it is impossible for any provider to actually provide an unlimited amount of bandwidth or disk space.
1st Choice Web Host provides budget website hosting to clients all over the world. Based in London 1st Choice Web Host prides itself on feature rich, affordable hosting packages. – www.1stchoicewebhost.co.uk
Web Hosting and Why Service Is King
Web Hosting and Why Service Is King
If you are an Internet business owner, you definitely have a website. Where you choose to maintain that site makes a big difference. You can’t afford to trust your Internet business to just any web hosting company. You need a web hosting company that understands that service is all they really have to offer.
Technical Matters
No one can dispute the fact that server speed and reliability, upgraded hardware and software and web hosting features are all important. After all, these are the features that will determine how fast your Internet business will be able to grow and expand. You don’t want to have to change web hosting companies in the middle of the game. Ideally, you want to stay with the same web hosting company for as long as you own your business. It just makes life easier.
Time Is Money
One important aspect of web hosting that people frequently overlook is the service. Yes, price matters, but service matters even more. Low prices won’t mean a thing if your website is down. If your site goes down, you lose sales – it is as simple as that. Also, when you have an Internet business, time is money. You don’t want to waste time waiting for the web host to provide you with that much-needed support. Every minute, hour or day that you have to wait for answers is another day that you could have spent doing what matters most – providing service to your customers and increasing your bottom line.
Why Service Counts More
These days, it is hard to find a web hosting company that focuses almost entirely on customer service. Yet, if you are able to find one of them, you will have hit the jackpot! A web hosting company that specializes in customer service is very valuable to you. Why? Because their aim is to keep you happy as a customer. This means that they will answer your calls promptly and provide you with the very best service. Additionally, because their focus is on you, the customer, this means that they want your business to succeed as well. It is in their best interest to make sure that they are providing you with the tools that you need for your business to be successful. Instead of trying to sell you a cookie-cutter web hosting package that has been sold to hundreds, perhaps thousands of businesses, they will listen to your needs and be able to customize a web hosting package especially designed for your business. In addition, they will:
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- Provide customer support 24/7
- Give you real-time access to their server status
- Give you a money-back guarantee
- Assist you with moving your website from another web hosting company
- Have a toll-free customer support phone number
- Consult with you on customized solutions for your busines
Your Internet business is your livelihood – don’t leave it to chance. Your choice of web hosting company can make the difference between the success and failure of your business. By choosing a web hosting company that focuses on service, you can make the right decision and give your business a fighting chance!
About the Author: Jorge Catena is CEO and Writer for www.downtownhost.com. Established in 201, web hosting provider DowntownHost offers many different hosting solutions to meet the needs of small business and personal websites. Find out more about the many plans offered at DowntownHost: website hosting, Blog hosting and reseller hosting.