How To Choose A Right Web Hosting Service?

Indeed, hustings a right web hosting comfort for your website is not an slight mishap especially when experienced are thousands of lacework hosting providers all remembrance almost specific web hosting packages. Therefore, it is important to know few major considerations even before you start your web hosting search. Below are three major criteria for web host seeker:

Web hosting traits demand

This is unvaried the mightily necessary account to build adjustment a innkeeper for your site. You solicitude to resolve the technical requirements for your website, this including:

a) Server suggestion and hardware requirements
If you happening to concur flowering a website that uses programming environments analogous as Active Server Pages (ASP), Visual Basic scripts, Cold Fusion or Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL database, in this case, you consign will to gem a lattice hosting hand that supports Windows proposition such as Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers.

Likewise, if you dash to gravy train programming languages comparable as Perl, CGI, SSI, PHP or mySQL database, hence gob interlacing hosting plans that help Unix/Linux strategy should be operative to hang out your hosting requirements. Once you have these server platform and hardware requirements in mind, you can decide the best web hosting plans for your need. For more information, you can read “How to select a web server and server platform?”

b) Disk turn & Bandwidth desideratum
Here is bounteous technical requisite that you covetousness to rest assured before selecting a interlacing hosting plan, i.e. disk scope and bandwidth. If you intend to impart a website that does not have a platoon of contents (meaning, web pages), then the disk space requirement may not be a big concern to you. In general, a disk space with 200MB to 500MB should be enough to meet your hosting requirement. In contrast, if you plan to host a website with enormous amount of graphic pictures, mp3 or video files, then you should consider a web hosting plan that provide huge disk space, for example, 500 MB to 1,000 MB.

Similarly, the bandwidth exigency bequeath depend on your suburb traffic estimation. Obviously, a website that gather to haul upset traffic leave smash the daily bandwidth premium very fast. If so, you will need to find one web hosting service that offer huge bandwidth with 40 GB to 100 GB per month. Depending upon your website requirement, choosing a web hosting service that provide sufficient amount of disk space and bandwidth is crucial consideration to prevent paying extra costs in the future should you overuse the monthly disk space and bandwidth allowance.

c) Other hosting traits
While the larger requirements are uttermost
important, practiced are poles apart hosting like that you have to presume true too. Can interlacing hosting provider aid video clips on your website, if you have? Is the lattice hosting assistance compatible with Dreamweaver or FrontPage web authoring tool? Do you plan to set up a virtual store online? Can the host support the e-commerce features without adding extra cost to your monthly payments? On top of that, you may also want to find out the number of email accounts provided, number of FTP accounts, web statistic software (analyze your web traffic), type of control panel supported (manage your web hosting account), database and scripting languages supported and etc.

Reliability and scalability

A culminating netting
hosting provider offers undisguised server uptime and flashing Internet connection. You should diagnostic pour in a lacework hosting aid that guarantee at inaugural 99% server uptime with high-speed Internet backbones using at number one OC3 (Optical Carrier) lines (155 Megabits per second) or above instead of T1 or T3 lines. A reliable web hosting provider usually invests heavily on their data center infrastructure with high performance servers, high speed multiple backbones providers with fail-over redundancy, backup power generators and firewall software protection in place to ensure they meet the uptime guarantee specified in the terms of service.

Similarly, you should aggregate a net hosting helping hand with hardware facilities that designed for scalability, thereupon that they can thrive
with your business. For example, if you need to elaborating further disk space, bandwidth or accommodate of mySQL databases, you should be telling to upgrade as needed without any problems.

Customer cooperation and sustain

The never cease basic basis in poll a netting
hosting furtherance is to catch a mesh hosting providers that offers admirable customer backing and support. You should always search for a web hosting provider that offers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week technical support that fielded with highly experience technicians, so that any web hosting problems will be resolved within a reasonable amount of time. You may also want to consider to test how responsive is their customer support by sending few inquiry emails to the web hosting provider. In general, any response in less than 24 hours is considered acceptable. It is a sign of poor customer support if they take more than one day to response.

In addition, a lacework hosting provider with elegant sustain
should and guard confused support channels, such as toll-free phone support, 24/7 email support, convincing chat, online knowledgebase, Interactive form tutorials and FAQ.

How to Choose the Right Web Hosting Plan for your Business

Any business, whether they’re brick and mortar establishment or an online business, needs a website. A website needs a host. A web host stores all the pages of your website and makes them available to computers connected to the Internet. Like most internet services, there are a lot of options. Web hosting is no different. When it comes to choosing a web host, you have two basic options, do it yourself or choose a hosting plan.

For the small to medium-sized business, hosting your own website quite likely has too many hurdles to be worth the effort. The initial costs for purchasing, setting up and organizing all the necessary hardware, licensing the software can be overwhelming and time consuming. Not to mention the recurring costs of a stable and reliable Internet connection. For most companies, except the very largest of firms, hosting your own website just doesn’t make sense. That leaves the second alternative, finding a hosting company and choosing a plan. Let’s begin by taking a look at choosing a hosting company.

Choosing Your Hosting Company

There are literally thousands of web hosting companies to choose from and evaluating them can be difficult. The first question you will want to ask a potential hosting company is what types of hosting plans they offer. There are likely to be several choices from starter type packages to the platinum version with all the bells and whistles.

Here are a few basic criteria to examine:

Service and Support:

Money Back Guarantee – Finding a web host is an investment but you don’t want it to be a risky one. Look for a host that offers a guarantee.

24/7 Technical Support – This is important. What happens to your business if your web host crashes? If you have an online business, you’re dead in the water. Know that not all technical support is created equal and just because someone offers 24/7 customer service doesn’t mean they’re actively available. It may mean that you get to leave a voicemail or stay on hold for hours and they’ll get to you when they can.

Testimonials and references can be extremely useful. Find out if other customers are happy with the hosting service and

Ease of use:

A Control Panel is your central hub of information. It is where you find all of your statistics and are able to manage all of your account features. If your host’s control panel is too difficult to navigate or doesn’t offer the tools your business needs, then it is best to look elsewhere. Your website is your business and your control panel needs to be easy for you to use. You don’t have time to spend searching for the information and tools you need.

You will probably want to upload scripts for message boards, email forums, set cookies, and the like. . If this is the case, you will want a web host that allows you to install and run scripts. Most hosting companies offer CGI, Common Gateway Interface, a protocol that allows web pages to interact with scripts on a server.

You will want to have email accounts for your website. For example, admin@ yourcompany.com and sales@yourcompany.com, etc…A POP (Post Office Protocol) Email Account is an email account hosted on your site and you will probably want more than one. Most hosting companies offer packages with different levels. For example, a beginner or starter package will have 1-5 email accounts, a middle of the road type account may offer up to 50 and a full business package may have unlimited email accounts available.

Website construction tools and/or Microsoft FrontPage extensions. You need to be able to design and develop your website. Many hosting companies offer templates and design tools. In addition they may offer FrontPage Extensions. FrontPage is a website design software program that is fairly easy to use and if your host allows you to upload your website onto the server.

Features:

Do you want to know who is visiting your website? What about what pages they visit or how long they stay online? What about click through rates? Any effective marketing plan or website plan needs to evaluate these statistics. This means you must find a hosting company that not only tracks this information for you but makes it easy for you to access and understand.

Marketing features like autoresponders and mailing list management are a fantastic feature but not all web hosting companies offer them. Take a good look at what your business needs before you sign on with a company. Sometimes a hosting company includes marketing features in your package and sometimes they are offered ala carte.

Security is important too. Look for a SSL, Secure Socket Layer, Secure Server. SSL is a protocol that allows for encrypted transmissions online. If you are collecting private information from your visitors, you will want this and you can include it in your privacy policy.

Some hosting plans offer shopping cart software integrated right into your account. This isn’t a must but it will save you a step if you offer products for purchase on your website

Members only areas require passwords but not all hosting companies offer this feature.

Choosing Your Hosting Plan

Nearly all hosting companies offer different types of hosting plans, including “shared” hosting and “dedicated” hosting. In addition, some hosts also offer a “virtual private” hosting option.

Here are the details and benefits of each.

Shared Hosting:

Shared hosting or “virtual” hosting (which is different from “virtual private” hosting described below) is when the hosting company hosts your website on its own physical servers for a monthly fee. In this type of arrangement, the hosting company will also be serving other companies’ websites from the same physical server. The hosting company is responsible for the technical details relating to keeping your site up and running, including server setup, bandwidth management, backups, and security.

Price is perhaps the primary advantage of shared hosting. Since you’re only using a portion of a single server, your costs are less than those for dedicated hosting. Also, since you are not directly responsible for management of the servers, you don’t need to commit as many resources to routine maintenance of your website. This also means your hosting company will handle many of the security matters for your website; you don’t need to make any direct investment in the software and hardware needed to secure the site.

However, because your website is on the same server as other clients, you have no direct control over the server as a whole, and certain site administration tasks may be more time consuming as compared to a site that is on a dedicated server.

Dedicated Hosting:

Dedicated hosting means your Web server is sitting on its own box, owned and managed by the service provider. Dedicated hosting means you will have more direct access to make different types of changes to your site compared to a shared hosting plan. The degree of host management depends on what exactly is offered by the service provider. Most providers offer special managed dedicated server programs that ensure continuous monitoring of server performance as well as routine tasks like data backups.

When you have a dedicated hosting solution, your website resides on its own server. This means that your company can directly control the machine and determine which Web applications are running on it. This also means that it is less likely that activities of other websites on the same physical server will negatively impact yours.

In addition, because the server only responds to client requests for information from your own website, there is likely to be a faster response time for the same amount of traffic across the server. If your server has a dedicated IP address, it will likely be easier to handle certain anonymous FTP and SSL encryption activities. Dedicated hosting arrangements are generally favored for high-traffic businesses. Because your website is the only one on the server, however, dedicated hosting costs are generally higher than with a shared hosting plan.

Virtual Private Hosting:

Virtual private hosting means that the server software is “virtualized” to permit the hosting of multiple websites on a single physical server (as with shared hosting), but each has its own copy of the operating system and permits greater customer access to the server (as with dedicated hosting). Virtual Private Hosting is generally available at a lower overall cost than traditional dedicated hosting, but provides the customer with much greater control and access to the website.

Free or Paid Hosting?.which to Choose???

While doing selection between a free or paid web hosting service there are several things to be keep in mind. Excluding cost, there are some other critical factors which play a key role.

Top most things which user should concern about are the intention of creating a web site. Is the intention is to share mere photos of the relatives and friends? Or else, the aim is to include several pages with dissimilar text on each making the task comparatively more composite? Or rather the site is meant for professional purposes?

User should know the objective of his/her concern web site in order to choose an ideal host. For instance, if the site is meant for personal snaps then it need not to counter an excess amount of traffic and limited amount of disk space and bandwidth is quite sufficient.

For the above mentioned objective free hosting can also be recommended. If the web master is inexperienced then also a free web hosting service can help him/her to brush-up html skills.

The user should be aware of the fact that he/she will enjoy less features and assistance in free service in comparison to paid service. But, the provided services are quite sufficient to hold up a web site on a small scale. However, user should remain ready bear the problems related to displaying of offbeat advertisements.

If one going to choose for paid hosting, he/she will find several options to choose from including various sorts of packages. Talking about features like disk space, bandwidth, free domain names, free sub-domains and unlimited email accounts are comparatively more and quite advanced in case of paid hosting. Other advanced features include a CGI-Bin, MySQL databases, Microsoft FrontPage extensions etc.

One can largely depend on the hosting services provided in paid hosting including customer support which is not to that extent in case of free web hosting.

If one talks on money basis then registration for a free web hosting service is free, even though user needs to buy his/her own domain name. When one talks about a basic paid service, then the expected range will be $5 to $10 for a month. By paying a small amount one can enjoy enhanced services, customer assistance and features.

How to choose a dedicated server!

So you’ve outgrown your shared host and it’s time now to move on to the real stuff. 
Yes we are talking about dedicated servers, those byte crunching beasts. Figuring out all of the options and services can be very confusing.
But No Worry!!
I will try and give you some tips and hopefully guide to your perfect server.

So let’s not waste any time and start with first segment.

What is a Dedicated Server?

Dedicated Server is a single computer connected to a network (internet). This computer and all of it’s processing power is dedicated to a single person or organization. Meaning that the computer resources are not shared by anyone else. You have the full control of the machine and you are free to run any software you want on that computer. 

Generally dedicated servers are used to serve web page requests ( html, images, videos …etc) but they can be used for many other purposes as well.

Do I need one or more servers  ?

To simplefy things we will divide the use of dedicated servers into these two groups:

Full Web site Hosting
Specific Service Hosting (Database, email , httpd …etc)
Single Web site Hosting

Hosting of a single or several web sites. In this kind of setup , all of the services/programs (http software, DB software, email software…etc) are installed and running on one dedicated server. Sometimes these services/programs can also be referred as “servers” them self.
This is the common setup for small to medium trafficked web sites since all of the necessary software needed to run the web site are located on one physical machine.  
Advantage to of this setup is that it lowers the cost, but disadvantage is that all of the machine resources are shared by all of the software and processes.

Specific Service Hosting

Hosting of a single software or service on it’s own dedicated machine. All of the resources on the machine are dedicated mainly for one type of service or functionality. For example, one might host only Database Software on the server so that all of the resources on that machine are only dedicated for processing of Database Queries. You are able to handle more queries, or deliver more pages.
Usually medium to high trafficked web sites will run this kind of setup.  

Traditional setup will consist of one or more server that will only handle web (http) request , then one or more servers only handling database requests and maybe one or more servers only handling processing of the emails. Theoretically there is no limitation on the amount of servers. As a group working together these servers are used to process in millions of requests a day.

Which setup do you choose ?

This of course depends on the amount of requests and traffic that your web site will be receiving. So to be able to answer this question we need to first understand little bit about what services are needed in order for web site to be accessed by the user.

Generally today’s dynamic web sites require two main service types to deliver a full working web site to the user’s browser.

WEB SERVERS / WEB SCRIPTS ( apache, IIS, php, perl, java )
DATABASE SERVER (MYSQL, MSSQL, ORACLE)

Use of the word “servers” in the above text is referring to the application / software and not to the physical machine. This is a common term used to describe the type of application.

Web server handles all of the initial requests from the browser and decides on how and where data from the Database is returned. 
Database server handles requests from the web server in a form of queries. These queries retrieve data from the storage (hard disk) and return it to the web server.

As you can see both web and database server work together to deliver the final product (web page) to the user. 

Usually web server handles more of the logic part so FASTER CPU and bigger MEMORY are always in need more then Hard Drive speed.
While database server handles more of data retrieval so FASTER HD and bigger MEMORY are always in need more then cpu speed.

In any case more memory is always needed

It’s important to note that all of the server software always uses some of the CPU, MEMORY and HARD DISK resources. Eventually they start fighting over the available resources. 
One way to stop this fight over the resources is to separate them onto each own dedicated server.

Another reason to separate service types is that is easier to optmize the machine to run well for one specific task then it is for all of the tasks.
For example:

Since we now know that Database needs faster Hard Drives , maybe we use more expensive faster Hard Drives in DB machine , and leave the cheaper hard drives on WEB machines where HD speed is not as important.
But maybe instead we use faster processors on WEB machines since they perform most of the logic.

Doing it like this we have optimal performance without wasting resources and $$$!

These are just general suggestions , and depending on the web site and it’s functionality these configurations will vary.

Server Features and Components.

Ok now that you understand what each (web, db) server is hungry for, how do you know what components to get?
Because of the sheer amount of different types and models of each component I would need to write several books just to cover that subject. 
So I am just going to give you some general guides for each type of component, which whould help you on your next server purchase.

CPU Speed:

This is a no brainer. More speed (Ghz) that processor has the faster it can do the calculations and faster the pages are going to get returned to the user.
Some CPU architectures are known to perform better then others in server setups so I suggest you do some research on that subject. 

Number of CPU Cores / Processors:

Another no brainer. More cores or processors your server has, more taks it can do simultaneously. Since most of the actions on the server are based on requests and each request usually spawns a separate process, you can see how more CPU Cores enables the server to handle multiple requests at the same time.

Amount of RAM:

I think you see the pattern here “MORE”. Needless to say that more RAM your server has, more requests it can handle at the same time. Reason for that is that each request requires certain amount of RAM so that it can be processed. This amount is dependent of various factors like: Software type, Operating System , Installed Modules …etc
For example popular web server software APACHE can take about 7mb to 15mb of RAM per request or process and that’s not accounting for any other processes already running or being spawned to compliment that each request.

Memory is probably best investment you can make in your dedicated server.

Hard Drive RPM speed

Again the faster the disk spins, quicker it can get to the data on disk. Some popular Har Disk speeds are : 7200RPM , 10000RPM and  15000RPM. 
Biggest performance increase by faster Hard Drives will be seen by applications which access the Disk often. Some of those applications are: Database servers, File Servers and Video Streaming servers.

SATA vs SCSI vs SAS

If you were wondering what all of these acronyms are related to , they are the 3 most common Hard Drive interfaces used in dedicated servers. 
Starting from left with SATA being the most affordable but usually not being the best performer.  While with SCSI generally you get better performance then SATA but at much higher cost and with a lot less disk space. With SAS you get better performance then SCSI and you also get more disk space.
Of course there is a lot more differences between these interfaces. Luckily there is tons of articles on the internet explaining it all. I suggest you spend some time researching.

Generally unless you are running very High Transaction DB server you are fine with SATA. And if you are looking for best performance and you don’t care about the cost then go with SAS.

To RAID or not to RAID

So yes we are still stuck with the hard drives. When you see a word “RAID” being used in a server setup , that means that server has 2 or more HD’s joined in an array forming one logical unit. Raid usually provides increased storage reliability through redundancy. There are different RAID setups and you’ve probably seen some: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 , RAID 10 …etc
Two most common ones you will see in server setups are RAID 1 and RAID 5

What you need to know about RAID 0 is that provides you with some performance and increased total disk space but has no redundancy. If one drive fails, you loose your data. 

RAID 1 provides redundancy thru mirroring and in certain cases performance increase, but you do not get increased disk space. If one drive fails you can still continue operating and be able to replace the broken drive without loss of data. This setup requires two Hard Drives.

RAID 5 provides redundancy and increased disk space. It requires minimum on 3 Hard drives. Maximum of disk space you can have is Size of Smallest Drive) * (Number of Drives – 1). If one HD fails you can still continue your operations.

RAID can be implemented via two common methods, via software or via hardware. 
Software RAID uses Computer resources  while Hardware RAID uses it’s own dedicated resource on the card.
If you have a powerful machine then performance difference between Hardware and Software RAID could be negligable

Generally it is thought that if available Hardware RAID is a better choice. 

If you have an option to “RAID”  your server, I say go for it, at least RAID 1. Servers are 24hr nonstop workhorses and any interruption due to single Hard Drive point of failure could cause serious downtime for your web site.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the term used to describe the amount of data that server will deliver over period of time. Hosting companies can choose to offer various pricing structures for cost of bandwidth.
But some of the most popular ones are:

Metered Bandwidth
Unmetered Bandwidth

Metered bandwidth packages usually come with certain amount of included bandwidth a month and if going over the included limit you are charged certain fee per transferred GB ( GigaByte ) of data.

Unmetered bandwidth packages allow you to to transfer as much as you can at the maximum included transfer rate. This maximum transferred rate is measured in Mbps ( megabits per second ).

Each pricing structure type offers its own advantages and disadvantages.

With metered bandwidth you usually have access to much faster connection so your speed can burst up to the hosting provider’s maximum bandwidth capabilities. This enables the user to download the file quicker if capable. Since you are charged per amount of data transfer, you are only limited to the speed of your uplink port.

With unmetered bandwidth you are limited (capped) to certain speed of your connection (10Mbps, 50Mbps, 100Mbps …etc). Amount of data you transfer is not measured. In nutshell hosting company says here is your max speed so you use it up to the max speed or not , you are charged one flat fee for that speed.

With metered bandwidth you have to make sure that amount of data transfer included a month can actually be delivered over a included uplink port. 
For example : Lets say with your server you get 6,000 GB of outbound transfer a month but your uplink port speed is 10 Mbps.
With this type of uplink speed if you were to continuously transfer for one month at the maximum speed of 10 Mbps you would only be able to transfer  3,240 GB of data. So to fully be able to utilize all of the allowed transfer usage you will have to upgrade to higher port speed.

Operating System

Usually hosting companies offer several different types of Operating Systems , but most of them are grouped into Linux/Unix based and Windows Servers.
OS X Server is a very rear breed to find on dedicated servers.

Choosing an operating system is mostly dependent on the requirements of software , libraries and applications you will be running on your server.
Certain software is available on both Linux , Unix and Windows , while others are only available for specific OS.

Linux based Operating Systems are very popular choice since most of them are free and usually require less resources to run then windows.

Control Panel

Control panels allow for easy management of dedicated servers. They allow you setup new virtual hosts, domains, emails accounts and various other tasks that can without a control panel be vary tedious and hard to setup.

Some are free and open source but for most of them you have to pay. Usually paid ones come with more features and support.
Most popular paid ones are : Cpanel, Plesk , DirectAdmin.
Most popular free ones are : Virtualmin GPL, Webmin, ISPConfig.

If you are a novice with dedicated servers and your web server is unmanaged by the hosting company then I would strongly suggest having some kind of control panel installed. It will make your server management easy and you will be able to spend the nights actually sleeping instead of trying to figure out why your apache server is returning “500 Internal Server Error”

One thing to note is that some Control Panels take over your OS and embed them self so deep with the OS that it can make doing setups and installs not supported by the control panel difficult.

Web Hosting Support and Management
Managed or Unmanaged?

Most of the Dedicated Server packages come as “Managed” or “Unmanaged”.

With unmanaged servers it’s your responsibility to manage the server. Meaning that installing and configuring any software on the server falls on you. Unmanaged servers are usually much cheaper and if you do not have any “System Administration” experience it can be difficult to manage the server.
One option is to get some type of control panel which can make the management of the server much easier.

With managed servers responsibility of managing of the server falls on the hosting company. If you are very new to all this or you do not have time to manage it your self then this is your best bet. Usually managed servers are much more expensive. Managed services come with different levels of management. Make sure that you find out exactly what is included in the management of your server, some tasks or software might not be covered and you might get charged hourly support rates.

Remote Reboot

Is referred to an option that enables you to instantly Hard Reboot your machine. This is usually done via web interface and it is useful since gives you the control to restart the server at your command. Once in a while something will happen with the OS or software on the server so that it crashes or freezes.
This requires the hard restart of the machine (cutting the power off to the machine, and starting again).

If remote reboot is not available , you can usually issue an email ticket or call the hosting company them self and they will perform this for you. Problem is that sometimes support team might not get to your ticket in a while, which is why remote reboot comes in handy.

Technical Support

Things do go wrong and they usually happen when you least expect. Servers crash, Hard drives fail, Processors can burn out and what do you do then? You are possibly thousands of miles away from the server and there is nothing you can personally do. You are in the hands of technical support.

There is all types of hosting companies out there, from those run by one person to those run by hundreds of skilled technicians. Some offer 24/7 manned phone, chat and email support, while some have only limited email support. Be careful when choosing your hosting company, pay good attention to the level of support they provide and see what is covered. For support that is not covered in your plan some hosting companies charge as high as $150 per hour. Make sure you read their SLA (Service Level Agreement) to see if they offer any guarantees for any down time as well

Conclusion

I hope that this article was able to give you some insight in the world of dedicated hosting and help you in your choosing of dedicated server.
If you see a mistake or have questions feel free to post a comment at http://dedicatedhostingdeals.com/blogs

Make sure you also check out the latest dedicated hosting deals we found on the net at http://www.dedicatedHostDeals.com

How To Choose An Affordable Web Host

Before you can get a website up and running, you need to have a place to put it. Paying for web hosting is, basically, like renting a small amount of space on someone’s server and paying what it costs them to send your web pages to your customers. Fortunately for you, though, web hosting has never been cheaper.

Domains and Hosting Together?

Many domain name companies have taken to offering you hosting when you buy your domain from them. This is generally an expensive option, and a bad idea – you’ll be getting few features compared to what you’re paying. Few people who are serious about web hosting get it from the same place they get their domains.

So Where Should I Start?

Well, that all depends on what your website is going to need. How many visitors do you expect to have? Are you going to have lots of large graphics on the site? Do you have a lot of articles or products that you want to put in a database? Do you want to have an email address at your website (yourname@yourdomain.com)? On and on it goes. Each host you look at will offer you different combinations of features at different price points, and finding the one that’s right for you can be quite a task. Here’s a technical-to-English guide to what you should be looking for.

MB storage. The more MB of storage you have, the more you can put on your website. For most websites, this number can be really very small without it being much of a concern – the pages would be too big for anyone to download and see before they’d be too big to store. You only really need to worry if you’re planning to put something apart from plain pages on your site. If you want to make a gallery for your digital photos or let people download ebooks from you, for example, this number needs to be higher.
GB bandwidth per month. This is a limit on how much data your website can transfer each month. For small websites, you don’t need to worry too much, but as you get more visitors the amount you need will increase sharply, especially if each one looks at lots of pages or downloads large files from the site. The amount of bandwidth your site needs is generally considered to be the deciding factor in how ‘big’ it is, and how much it will cost you.

MySQL databases. The number of databases your website will have to store things in. It will make it much easier for you if you have one. Don’t pay more to get extra, though: one database is all you need. It’s worth noting that if your host may offer some other kind of SQL instead of MySQL (for example, PostgreSQL). You should usually avoid anything apart from MySQL, unless you know what you’re doing.

PHP, Perl, ASP, JSP, ColdFusion, Python, Ruby. These are all scripting languages, used to write your website. You should make sure your host offers the languages that any software you plan to use is written in. If you don’t have specific requirements, then you should be fine with just Perl and PHP.

Subdomains. These allow you to split your website into more sections than just ‘www’ – you might decide, for example, that you would people to be able to go to ‘shop.yourdomain.com’ and ‘news.yourdomain.com’ and see pages there. You don’t really need these, though, as doing the same thing with subfolders (‘www.yourdomain.com/shop’) is usually just as effective.

FTP accounts. An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) account is what you’ll use to upload your website to your host. You’ll always get one of these. The only situation when you’ll need more is if you want to let someone alter things on your site without giving them the master password.

POP3 accounts. POP stands for ‘Post Office Protocol’, which is just fancy-speak for email. The more POP3 accounts you get, the more email addresses you can have: useful if you want to have sales@yourdomain.com for new customers and support@yourdomain.com for existing ones, for example.

How to Choose a Web Server Platform?

Every website needs a reliable web server to be hosted on, so that it can be accessed via internet users. Today, in web hosting market there are many types of web servers available running on different platform to select.  types are There is a wide range of web servers running on different platform to choose from within the web hosting market today. As per the Netcraft, a company that keeps statistics on the leading web servers and the platforms on the Internet, the most popular platforms and web servers are:

* UNIX and Linux running Apache web server

* Window NT/2000 running Internet Information Server (IIS)

The other web server includes WebLogic, iPlanet, Sun ONE, Zeus and etc… Given the widespread popularity of Apache (closed to 60% market share) and Microsoft IIS (approximately 30%), you can almost guarantee you can find these two platforms are supported by most of the web hosting providers.

Operating systems are an importance piece of software that is required by each computer to be installed before it can function properly. Today, most of the personal computers are running on Microsoft Windows operating system: Win98, WinXP or Win2000.

Likewise, all web servers need operating system to perform different functionalities and different web servers run on different operating systems (or so called platforms). One of the most commonly found platform is UNIX that comes in various varieties that are popular with web hosts, including FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux. Another popular platform that has gained strong ground as a platform for web hosting market is Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.

How do you choose your web server platform?

If your website is purely make up of static web pages (i.e. HTML files), then any web hosting platform will work fine for you. However, if your website allows dynamic content, you will most likely need to run specific server-side functionality such as CGI scripts, JSP, ASP, SSI or PHP. In this case, UNIX platform web hosting will be ideal for your requirement.

On the other hand, if you need to use specific applications that require Windows to run such as ASP, .Net, MS Access, Microsoft SQL server or Cold Fusion, then you will need to find a web hosting providers that support Microsoft’s Windows NT platform. Otherwise, all other server-side functionalities such as PHP, Perl and MySQL can be supported by UNIX platform.

While common programs such as Perl, PHP, Flash etc run on both UNIX and Window platform. Many other free open source software programs are available only for UNIX than for Windows. As a result, UNIX hosting is less expensive than Window hosting. So, if hosting cost is a big concern to you, then you should consider UNIX or Linux hosting.

If you have already decided on the type of design on your web pages, make sure you can find a web hosting plan that support your needs by reading the full features of the web hosting plan before you sign-up.

Tips on how to choose the best domain name for your Business or Company

So you have decided to put your business online? Making your business available in the World Wide Web awaits big opportunities. World-wide exposure, low cost marketing, and real-time information transfer are among the advantages of placing your business online. But before you go online and make a website for your business, the first thing to do is to choose the best domain name for your business. Domain name is what internet users type in the URL address bar of an internet explorer to access a certain website. Example, if you need to go to Google to search some information, you need to type Google’s domain name which is www.google.com in the URL bar of an internet explorer.

A domain name (dot .com, .net and .org) cost about 10$ for a one year registration. You can take a look at NameCheap and GoDaddy, two of my most favorite domain registrars. It’s pretty much affordable to purchase a domain name for the benefits that you can get out of that name. Choosing your domain name at its best is very important since it will become your business’ identity in the web. This name will be the one which will be remembered and used by your potential visitors and customers in the cyber world. So let us choose the best and if possible the perfect name for our business. The following are tips on how to choose the best domain name for your business.

1. It must be short. Internet users love to type short word in the URL address bar. Short domain name are also easy to memorize. A one-word to two-word domain name is acceptable. But since one word domain names are not already available for registration, you need to brainstorm a short two-word domain name – unless you can invest enough money to buy a one-word domain name from a certain owner.

2. It must be easy to remember. A short domain name doesn’t absolutely mean it is easy to memorize. You need to choose a name which will mark people’s mind. You can choose names that are brain catching and names that will stick in the minds of people wherever they will go.

3. It must be clean. Beware of domain names that were used in the past as porn sites or blacklisted sites. You do a research on the history of the domain you intend to use. You can go to Archive.org and search for the history of any domain name.

4. It must be a dot com. Dot com domain extension is the most valuable and precious domain among the top level extension available for a domain name. Of course, you must use what is the best domain name.

5. It must not be trademarked. Never register a domain which is already trademarked by other companies – although they are still available. This is to avoid any legal liability in the future.

6. It must be align to you business. This is the most important consideration you should take. Your domain name must describe what is your business is. It should be the name of your registered company or a name which is very near to it. You can also choose a name which your industry belong. Example, if you are a restaurant entrepreneur, you can choose a domain name which contain a word” restaurant”, “food” or “dining”.

The above should be met to attain a great domain for your business or company.  But if possible you can also consider the inherent value of a domain name for marketing purposes. You can consider a domain name which is rich in search engine results. This domain names have great potentials of driving traffic to your website and therefore increasing prospective customers.

Domain Names: How to Choose and Protect a Great Name for Your Website

Product Description
With clever (and even not-so-clever) names for websites disappearing faster than you can say “Internet Start-Up,” e-entrepreneurs need to know that their choice won’t be whisked out from under their ISPs. This book explains in plain English how to choose, register and protect a domain name that works. Written both for those shepherding an existing business onto the Web and those launching an e-commerce start-up, it explains how to: * check on the availabili… More >>

Domain Names: How to Choose and Protect a Great Name for Your Website

Choose the Right Web Hosting Package

With thousands of web hosting providers all around competing for one’s business, it may be confusing to find the one that’s right for one’s web site. The following are some key considerations that can help one to narrow down his/her choices to the most affordable and best options to meet one’s personal, professional or business web page needs.

What is the kind of web site that one is planning?

One’s personal web page has far different needs than one professional web page and that needs a different style of hosting than an eCommerce storefront. There are several web hosting companies offering plans sized to fit any size of style of web site. Thus selecting an appropriate plan depends upon the purpose for which one is developing his/her site.

Personal Web Page Hosting

Just like hosts there are dozens of free servers that will host your personal web pages for free, and many of them even offer most of the perks that one gets with a paid web hosting account. If one wants a personal web page without the ads, though, he/she can get a web page hosting for as little as $4.95 per month with no advertising, and with support for things like PHP and mySQL. There are many affordable web hosting packages that even register a domain name for free.

Professional Web Page Hosting

If one is setting up a web site for a professional firm, he/she will definitely want to opt for a web page hosting provider offering excellent support, free or cheap domain name registration and a good web site builder with professional looking templates to make creating one’s web site easy. If one is planning to take orders or any sort of customer information via his/her web site, then he/she will also want a web hosting provider that offers one secure server access (SSL).Thus depending on the features one opts for ,one can pay $4.95-$29.95 per month.

Business/eCommerce Web Page Hosting

If one’s business web site is more than informational web pages about his/her business, his/her web hosting package should include eCommerce software like a shopping cart, a checkout, a payment system and SSL access. Thus one needs more space and bandwidth allowance than a typical personal site. One can find many affordable eCommerce web hosting packages starting at around $14.95 per month.

Enterprise Level Web Page Hosting

Does one need space for one’s business to collaborate on projects, store information for easy retrieval and to track orders, deliveries and work hours? One requires a web hosting company that specializes in providing enterprise level web hosting solutions to large businesses. The best web hosting account should include the highest level security access to keep one’s important information secure, 24/7 customer support and tools to make access easy for all his/her employees. An affordable enterprise level packages start at around $99 per month and range upwards from there depending on the amount of customization and use that one’s web pages will obtain from it.

How to Choose Between Free Web Hosting and Professional Web Hosting

One of the questions that may trouble your mind during the making of your website may be the question of whether to choose between free web hosting and professional web hosting.  This is an important question, as not every one will opt to buy a professional web hosting.  There are some instances in which it may be more advantageous for you to get free web hosting for your website.

If your website is an amateur website that is hobby oriented, then it may be better for you to get free web hosting for your web site.  This is more advantageous for you, as this way you can make various websites for your hobby and improve your skills without paying any money.  However, one serious disadvantage of free web hosting would be that most of them will have advertisements and the service will be slow.  Moreover, free web hosting will usually not allow for full POP3 e – mail support.

However, if you have a business oriented website or any type of a professional website, then it is more advantageous for you to get professional web hosting.  Especially, professional web hosting could be the best solution for web sites that require high amounts of traffic and high amounts of bandwidth.  In addition, professional web hosting companies will offer you 24 / / 7 support for 365 days a year.  This is an important criterion, as you would not want your professional company web site to be interrupted and you also would not want to be not able to reach a professional support service to take care of the problem.  Although a professional web hosting service will cost you money, the benefits will far outweigh its costs.  Hence, for professional websites and especially for internet marketing websites, you should find a reliable web hosting company to meet your needs.

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