Choosing Your Web Hosting Company – Get It Right The First Time!
Most companies and small businesses need a company to host their websites. Have you looked for a web hosting company on the Internet lately? How many web hosting companies did you see? There are literally thousands of web hosting companies, each competing for your business. So, how to pick the right one?
When you think about it, the web hosting company will become the lifeblood of your business. Everything from how fast (or how slow) their servers are, to how much bandwidth they offer will ultimately impact your business. Understandably, you don’t want to choose the wrong one, which could be a costly mistake (even fatal if you start losing customers). Conventional wisdom says that you should pick a large web hosting company to host your website. But, is conventional wisdom always right? Think about it..if you go with a very large web hosting company, are they going to be able to give you the personal service that your business deserves (and needs)? Maybe. But maybe not.
The fact is that you need a web hosting company that will maintain the servers, perform upgrades, support the most popular applications and keep your site running with minimal downtime. Can a conventional, large web hosting company do this? Some can.
But think about this..how many guaranteed uptime claims have you seen? Hundreds? Thousands? The fact is that most large web hosting companies now claim to have the latest servers and technology with uptime over 98%, etc, etc, etc. That being said, server uptime is not a major reason for you to choose one web hosting company over another.
For many people, it all comes down to price. After all, online business owners need to save money, right? The cost for web hosting generally varies and is dependent on the size of the web hosting company, the web hosting packages that they offer, disk space, and other features. Keep in mind that, in today’s world of web hosting, (as with almost anything else), size does not necessarily indicate quality. Before you sign-up with the web hosting company, check to find out if you will get enough space for your site for now and the future, if your site will eventually grow.
How reliable is the web hosting company’s customer service? The fact is that time is money ¨C you don’t make money if your site is down. Also, if you are having any problems whatsoever related to the hosting of your site, you need to be able to resolve these quickly and easily – preferably without waiting on hold for hours. Assuming that most web hosting companies have email for support, sometimes you need to speak to a live human being because your problem may require immediate attention. Does the web hosting company have a money back guarantee?
You need to be able to take your business somewhere else if you find that the web hosting company is not working out for you.
Your web hosting company should absolutely offer easy administration for your account. This is very important. You can solve most problems yourself if the Control Panel area is straightforward. Do you want to have to call the web hosting company every time you need to make a change? I didn’t think so!
Do you understand the Control Panel well enough to be able to handle applications installation and email set-up and administration by yourself? Does the web hosting company have a knowledgebase, FAQ section or Online Help on their site that you can reference for small questions?
Choosing a web hosting company is no small decision, so you should not take it lightly. On the surface, it may seem to be as simple as choosing the lowest price or largest company, but in reality it is much deeper than that. Your business depends on your web hosting company and how good it is. You can’t afford to trust it to just anyone.
Greg Cesar gets results. Find out how hundreds of webmasters benefit from Greg’s web hosting and internet marketing knowledge by visiting this link:
http://www.hostpartnerplus.com
Greg Cesar gets results. Find out how hundreds of webmasters benefit from Greg’s web hosting and internet marketing knowledge by visiting his Web Hosting Company website.
Traffic: Let Your Web Hosting Company Be Your Guide
Presumably you have a website because you want people to visit it. Visitors are traffic. And generating a constant flow of fresh traffic, both unique and repeat visitors, will take up more of your energies than probably any other website-related task, including website maintenance and sales. It is with this imperative in mind that web hosting companies have begun offering their customers assistance in generating that traffic.
URL Submission
One of the most basic and common ways that web hosting companies help you get traffic to your site is by offering to submit your URL for you to the major search engines, such as Google or Ask Jeeves, for free. While this is certainly a nice convenience, submitting your URL to the major search engines is already free and doesn’t take all that much time. So to impress you with their traffic generating wiles, a web hosting company is going to have to do more than just this.
That said, some web hosting companies include with their free URL submission services, free submission not only to search engines but to directory websites (web portals), classified pages, and blogs. That’s a bit more useful, as your time can be much better spent. Just make sure you know exactly where the web hosting company does submit your URL to and where it does not.
And it’s not as simple as submitting your URL once to each place and leaving it at that. To remain competitive (not to mention relevant), you’ll need to resubmit your URL to each place on a recurring basis. Conversely, however, it is frowned upon and may even be detrimental to your traffic-generating efforts, to resubmit your site too often or too frequently. If your web hosting company offers free URL submission services, find out how often they resubmit it to each place and what guidelines they use to set their submission schedule.
Search Engine Optimization
Many web hosting companies offer free Search Engine Optimization tools and tips with their web hosting services. The object of SEO is to catapult your free listings on the major search engines to the top of the first page of results for your chosen keywords. There are a number of excellent methods for using SEO to dramatically increase traffic to your website, including website review and SEO analysis, keyword and keyword phrase suggestion and selection, and header/footer/meta-tag generation.
Any web hosting company that offers free SEO tools with their web hosting packages is well worth considering.
Reciprocal Linking
Web hosting companies may also offer Reciprocal Linking services, where they help you find other sites that already receive the targeted traffic you desire and arrange to post a link to each other’s site on your own respective sites. This is another of the most effective and beneficial free forms of targeted lead generation. If a web hosting company offers you free reciprocal linking assistance, it’s a definite plus.
Tracking and Reports
Quite possibly the most valuable traffic tool a web hosting company can provide you is tracking. And simple click tracking (tracking how many clicks your homepage/landing page gets) isn’t enough. You want to know and compare the number of unique visitors and repeat visitors. You want to know the paths visitors took clicking through your site. And you want to know your conversion rate, or how many of each type of visit resulted in a signup or a sale.
The best web hosting companies won’t merely track these statistics for you, but they’ll generate reports comparing and evaluating the results and making suggestions on how to improve your traffic generating campaign.
Copywriting
The benefits of heavy traffic (namely: more traffic) don’t come just by getting people to click to your site; you also have to keep them there. One of the best ways to hold a visitor’s interest is with interesting content relevant to what they’re looking for.
Many web hosting companies will help you create compelling and relevant content to post at your site which will serve to key ends; it will captivate visitors to stay at your site (and even click around to explore more of what you’ve got) and it will give you better and better search engine rankings.
Website Building
With that in mind, don’t underestimate the power of a well-designed website. People don’t spend much time on a site that’s unattractive, error-filled (whether textual or graphical) or difficult to navigate. At the absolute least, a web hosting company should give you a website editor/builder that helps you design the kind of website loved by search engines and visitors alike.
Hosting-Review.com is the premier resource on web hosting. Visit http://www.hosting-review.com for comprehensive reviews and rankings of over 50 web hosting providers, as well as informative articles about everything to do with hosting and the top-rated picks for different types of hosting packages.
Information About Choosing a Web Hosting Company
You choose web hosting company only once.
The most important thing that you have to remember about a web hosting company is that you get to choose your web hosting company only once. No second chance. No replacing or changing of web hosting company is possible once its been finalized. Therefore it is very crucial that you are convinced about all the factors of your web hosting company being up to the mark. Like everything else, deciding about a webhosting company or choosing a web hosting company should also be done after a thorough research.
Parameters of choosing a web hosting company
While we are looking for web hosting company to host our website on, we will come across number of ads and links that promise many things. Starting from cheap web hosting to free web hosting and so on. All this lure should be ignored and we should focus on what we are looking for. Following factors should be considered and given importance while choosing a webhosting company for our website:
Technical Support and Pricing of web hosting company
I will suggest you opt for a paid web hosting if you are serious about having a website, and if there is a purpose to it. If you are trying to make money with it or it’s your medium to expand your business online, or about spreading a message across. don’t look for web hosting company that offers the least price. Le low price now be a criteria. It will not help. Online Technical support wise 24X7x365 is what you should look for. Web hosting is about hosting your site on the web for people to see. You can’t afford to be in a problem that cannot be resolved in bare minimum time span. Company that is equipped to resolve your problem right away is the company that will stand your business in good stead.
Disk Space Provided by web hosting company
The disk space that is being allotted to your web site is a key element in a good web hosting deal. In the beginning what might seem to be plenty of room, may be inadequate once the space starts to fill out. The scope and potential for growth of your business will mean that you could need more space in future. You should therefore choose a web hosting provider which will be able to offer more space. If your website hosting company can’t give it to you, please understand that chances of your growth may be severely limited. See, how important this factor is!
Speed and E-mail accounts provided by web hosting company
Speed and E-mail accounts provided by web hosting company is of utmost importance. Is the web hosting company capable of providing as many E-mail accounts as you need. (one for each working member) Speed is the most most most important aspect. Suppose, a visitor clicks on your link and your site doesn’t appear at once, the visitor will simply click on another link. You have to know how fast your internet hosting provider can provide access to your visitors.
Does your web hosting deal include E-Commerce and other Features like, site stats, Control Panel, Transfer Fee etc
Web hosting companies offer variety of services to their costumers. You got to make a list of features that your site will require, are you into shopping online, selling and buying online? Then its an E-Commerce venture and you will need a shopping cart. That’s one requirement. Some more important points in your list may be sub domains, multiple domain discounts, Set Up or Installation fees-which is one time, transfer fees, email accounts, website statistics logs, control panel, site creation tool, front page extensions etc
The above points cover everything of importance while considering your web hosting company. I repeat to remind you two thing you should always keep in mind that you can choose your web hosting company only once so you can’t afford to be confused or ill informed. If you are new and know little about it you should check out a reliable web-hosting company. You can speak to a few webmaster before arriving at your decision.
The author is Purva Mewar webmaster of Work at Home Based Business websites, http://www.yesearnfromhome.com and http://www.work-at-home-earn-extra-income.com
Choosing a Web Hosting Company
Web hosting is a big business on the internet nowadays…so big, in fact, that it can be difficult to choose from amongst the myriad of options.
How do you know you’re going to get reliable service and customer support at reasonable prices? And how do you compare what one company offers versus another?
A web hosting review site can help you sift through the multiple options by showing you the good, the bad and the ugly of web hosts. A good review site like http://www.hosting-review.com basically does the homework for you – you can compare prices and packages easily in one place, as well as read detailed information about various web hosts, as written by webmasters who have both user experience and customer feedback on the different hosting companies.
Still not sure what to do? Let’s go through some of the different criteria you should consider when evaluating the best web host for your needs:
Space & Bandwidth
Your needs for space and bandwidth will depend on how large and/or graphics-heavy your site is, as well as your expected volume of traffic. Most plans typically offer at least 50 MB. However, make sure that you are not going to get charged extra for features such as mail, system programs, and other elements of your web site as these may or may not be included in disk space limit provided. The same goes for bandwidth – 500 MB is typical for many average-sized sites, but you may need more or substantially less.
Price
How much does the hosting package cost? (remember, the lowest price is not necessarily the way to go here). Is payment monthly or annual? Is a contract required? Some hosting companies offer substantial discounts when you sign up for a multi-year contract. What price implications are there if you go over your bandwidth limit? Read the fine print!
Scalability
If you run out of space or use up all your bandwidth and need to upgrade to a more robust package, what are the implications? Are you able to upgrade packages easily if required?
Technical Support
What types of help are offered, what are support hours, and is support free? You’d be surprised – web hosts range from offering virtually no support all the way up to free phone, fax, email and chat support 24 hours, 7 days a week. Also, beware that some hosts charge for certain types of support. This is more info you’ll get from those hosting reviews.
Domain Registration
Does the web host supply domain registration services or must you register your domain yourself? How portable is your domain name? You will want to be able to take it with you if you ever change hosting providers.
Additional Services
What additional services are offered with your package? This can include free scripts, web traffic statistics tools, shopping carts, design help, and many other features and functions. Many of these can be very useful and are worth checking out. On the flip side, try not to pay for what you won’t use.
Speed & Uptime
Above all, you want a reliable site that does not bog down or go down. It is a nightmare to have visitors leave your site because it is not working or it is so slow that they lose interest. A good web host will have an uptime guarantee and will notify you of any scheduled downtime.
Email Addresses
Ensure that your chosen web host package gives you enough email addresses for your needs. Remember, too, that if you’re a one-man show, it can’t hurt to have multiple email addresses (eg. sales@mysite .com, customerservice@mysite .com, etc) – even if they all go to your inbox, you look like a bigger company, which can add to your credibility.
Choosing that hosting company can be time-consuming and complicated, so use hosting reviews to your advantage – after all, these are webmasters who have used different hosts themselves!
Hosting-Review.com is an independent source for finding the best web host to match your needs. Find out the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to web hosts. Our professional webmasters regularly review web hosting companies and their packages to help make your web hosting choice easy!
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