1. Coordinate your switch. If you have a month-to-month hosting account, try to purchase your new hosting package about a week before your old account will expire. This will save you from paying for two hosting packages in one month, but still give you enough time to get everything done. However, if you need more time, than you may need to have more of an overlap.

2. Back-up all of your data. This is the most important thing to do when you are moving your server. Unless your new host offers a transferring feature, you will need to take care of all of this yourself. You will need to save all of your data to your computer’s hard drive, including any directories that may contain scripts, images, or other important information.

3. Check on your paths. If your new server has a different path to perl or a different way of handling PHP or CGI, you may need to tweak your current scripts to make sure that they function correctly.

You may also need to check your SQL paths to make sure that they are up-to-date. Each host handles SQL creation differently, so it is important to make sure that your script files contain the correct information.

4. Back-up your SQL or other databases. If you are on a Unix platform, you can use phpMyAdmin to easily back up the entire contents of your SQL database. If you are on Windows, you may need to use a different method or contact your current host to make sure that it will be saved.

5. Begin transferring files. Once you have your new IP address, you can begin uploading your site’s back-up to your new server. If you do this right away, there will be less downtime during the switch.

If you have scripts that call certain directories, make sure that you name the new directories on your new server so that they will match. Don’t forget to upload the contents of the directories you have backed-up from your old server.

6. Load your database back-ups on your new server. This will be the reverse of step 4. Most databases offer the ability to easily add your existing data to your new account.

7. Change your nameserver. Once you have all of your data on the new server, you can change you nameserver with your domain name registrar to reflect your site’s new home.

8. Thoroughly check all of the files on your site. Make sure that there are no dead links or scripts that are not functioning correctly.

Although transferring is never easy, with a little work on your part, you can make it through with the least amount of hassle and the least amount of downtime for your visitors.

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Why We Should Create a Family Web Site

A family Website is a great way to share what is going on with other family members and friends, especially those who live far away. On the family web site, we share a lot of fun thing about family on it, for example:

Introduction of family memberExcited event in family, such as: birthday party, new baby birth, wedding, a travel, etc.The growth of the kid or just a few pictures we take during a walk. Your kid will enjoy going back seeing what you did a few years ago.Post funny jokes that we read or comment on what is going on in the worldJust think about all the other possibilities.So making a family web site will be a fun family project. And it really isn’t hard to create it and it doesn’t cost too much as well!

Choose a Name for Your Family Web Site

First, you will need to think about a domain for your family site, choose something that will make sense to you and your family. And try to keep it simple and easy to be remembered.

What kinds of Web Hosting You Need for a Family Web Site

Basic Requirement of Web Hosting Plan for a Family Site Basic requirement will discuss about the general feature of Family Web Hosting, such as disk space, band width, reliability, etc. Those are the basic feature you need to think about when you want to hosting a web site.

For a family web site, a shared Linux Server web hosting plan is the best choice unless you really want to use ASP or .Net to build you site, spending more time and more money.About reliability, since most of the web hosting company can provide 99.5% uptime, and considering it’s not a business site, this uptime percentage is good enough for a family site. No need to spend more.Disk space will heavily depend on what you want to put online, only picture, or together with Video, since video become more and more common, and you might want to share the family video with your friends. So let’s do a simple calculation, one picture will 250k, and 5 minutes video will take 50M. So, if you put 2000 picture and 100 video on your family site, picture will take you 0.5g disk space, and video will need 5g, overall, you will need a space around 5.5g. About Band Width, if you plan to put a lot of picture and video online, a 10g band width is expected, if only picture, a 500M -1G should be ok.For Email account, unless you have a very very big family, otherwise 1 – 10 Email account should be ok, and you also can use some free email account from Yahoo, Gmail, etc. Since Family site is also shared in the friends or family group, you definitely has no need to have a Shopping Cart of SSL to do the business, and you also don’t need a Web Market Tools to attract a lot of traffic to your web site.What about the server location? For this question, I would like to suggest you to host your site domestic company considering most of the visitor in your country, it would be faster to access your site.You have no need to spend a lot to get a domain name, it’s usually take around $6.5, and in most cases, you can get it as free when purchasing a web hosting plan. And you can order Domain and Web Hosting plan from different company, and have the Web hosting company to help you host the domain in their server. You only need to submit a case, and they will handle it for you.

Advanced requirement of Web Hosting Plan for a Family Site

The advanced requirement will discuss about what additional help you need to get from web hosting company if you have some specific requirement. And the solution for it will depend on how skilled you are, BlogDo you want to have a Blog in your family web site, if yes. And you know some basic PC knowledge, you will only need to you will need a web hosting plan can host MySQL database and provide Fantastico in its cPanel, you can install the blog by yourself via Fantastico (it’s pretty easy, just click through some installation process). But if you have no IT knowledge and don’t want to spend some time to learn, you will need to have Blog preinstalled by web hosting company. Another good solution for it would be you can write the Blog in some other space, such as www.blogger.com, and add a link in your web site which will lead the visitor to your blog. Photo GalleriesIf you don’t know how to arrange the picture in the web site, you will need a Photo Galleries to help you manage the picture. But if you know about HTML, this will be something optional, you can spend some time to build a one you like most. After all, create a family site is a fun project, and DIY is part of it. Web Design Tools

If you have basic knowledge about HTML, and know how to use the tool like Frontpage, you will no need to have Web Design tools in your web hosting plan, otherwise, it would be good to have some basic web design tools included.

Price

No great comment for this one, just pay what you want and get what you have paid.

What’s the Best Web Hosting Plan for Family Site

There are a lot of Web Hosting Plan can host your family site, many people might want to order a plan which can host more than one domain and then they host their home small business site and family site together under different domain. This could be a choice, but I would like to suggest to host them separately and the thought here is to separate your business and private usage. Don’t let your family site impact your business, your kid might upload a lot of picture and use up your bandwidth and make your business unavailable. You can visit Web Hosting for Family Site to see which companies provide the web hosting plan for family web site.

Reference

Web Hosting: Guides, Compare Prices, Hosting News, Consumer Review, and Marketing

Web Hosting Plan for Small Business

Web Hosting Guide

1)Type of website to be hosted

If it is personal and just for fun, there are many free hosting options available for you, with a few small catches. You will most likely have to display some banner advertising on your page in exchange for this service. If your site is business-related, then you should by all means find a good commercial host. You should also have your own domain name and IP address. Free accounts are not for anyone even half serious about doing business on the web.

2)Affordable Price

The cost of web hosting ranges anywhere from totally free to thousands of dollars a month for a dedicated server, depending on the features you need and the options available on the particular package you choose, check if there is a requirement to sign up for a minimum period; and if your package is scalable, meaning that upgrades will not be a problem or burden for you when the time comes.

3)Choosing the Platform: Linux or Microsoft Exchange

The choice depends on what kind of website you have and what you need to be served, if you’re putting up a basic site with standard HTML, without any server side scripting or database support. For most people just starting out, a Linux server is fine; but if you plan to use databases or ASP on your site, then you should go with Microsoft Exchange.

4)Space and traffic requirements

Space and traffic are often the basis for many web hosts rates, whether or not this has any basis in reality. I say this because the majority of sites require only a few megabytes (MBs) of space and the amount of traffic they will receive is rarely an issue.

5)Bundled email accounts

This is an often underrated feature of web hosting packages, since emails are essentially the lifeblood of an online business. Be sure that your package contains enough emails and aliases for your business, preferably an unlimited number of both. Be careful from the start and choose a package that meets your needs.

6)24/7 customer support

Many Web Hosts offer both email and phone support while others are available only via email. A competent host should offer 24/7 toll-free technical support provided by experienced, professionally trained technicians.

7)Maximum Up-time

Many companies will say they’re up 99.9% of the time when the reality may be quite different. Look into this as much as possible and again, check with as many references as possible to find out their experiences.

In the end, choosing the right Web Host really depends on your individual needs. Subsequently, what may constitute the perfect Web Host for one person may not meet the needs of another. It is up to you to decide, through a combination of logic, research skills, and a dash of intuition.

So, how can one define hosting?

It generates from the word “host” which has different meanings that are familiar to everyone. Hosting denotes providing place for a person’s website on the web hosting company’s servers and making it viewable on the Internet and suspending it.

Why can a user once need hosting?

For an instance suppose one has created a website and now is in a dilemma how his/her friends and acquaintances can notice it. Now he has placed it on his/her personal computer, but then he/she came to know that it’s risky for the computer’s safety and requires permanent Internet connection. This results in plenty of inconveniences for the user. To avoid such sort of things, there is requirement of web site hosting.

There are several kinds of web site hosting. They can be systematically analyzed by looking below:

Joint or virtual hosting

Devoted hosting/ server, Co-location

VDS/VPS –Virtual Dedicated Server/Virtual Private Server

One should before choosing any type of web hosting must consider the following things:-

Free Shared hosting

If one wants to host some non-profit making or his/her personal web site it’d be more gainful to use basic shared hosting for zero amount of fee. This kind of web site hosting is rather logical alternative not only if the user is a beginner in web site building rather if he/she wants to try some innovative ideas and don’t wish to pay for it. However of course the user doesn’t have to assume it to grant his/her site the best conditions, for e.g. proper bandwidth, disk space etc.

Various other features are also there which needs consideration like MySQL, PHP support etc. It moreover gives poor web statistics.

Paid shared hosting

It is quite true that almost all sort of small businesses, intermediate and large professional sites employ shared hosting, because they do not require the whole server’s space and further the whole server costs which are quite high. With shared/virtual hosting such vital features, as multiply e-mail, MySQL, PHP, are supported. The main drawback is decline of one’s site’s security.

Dedicated hosting /Server

It is considered to be an ideal hosting for those, who require much storage and bandwidth and are good in server administration. With this one is in a condition of using all necessary software, but if a user doesn’t possess adequate knowledge to administrate his/her server it will be a little bit difficult for him/her.

Co-location

It can be termed as a sub type of dedicated hosting and can be compared with user’s own house which was put into existence particularly for him/her, along with his/her preferred furniture and all. It’s built on the user’s hosters (ISP) ground. This service is implied to fulfill only a particular user’s tasks and is designed for fulfilling his/her needs alone. Likewise, its cost is equally high.

VDS/ VPS

Virtual private server is a sort of web site hosting that is rooted on dividing a physical server into several virtual ones. It possesses comparatively less price though gives same promise as dedicated server. Now at this point of time after looking at all the pros and cons one can easily decide as to which host services to choose as per his/her needs.

However, a discerning webmaster will be able to weed out mediocre web hosts by using four basic qualities that will assess the worthiness of a web host site. The first is experience. A good web hosting site with years of experience can deal with any difficulties that can arise be it on your part or on their part. Years of experience will mean that they have encountered many glitches before and they would know how to resolve the problem.

Before signing in with a web hosting company you have to be sure they can give you adequate support in the form of tutorials. Designing your website would not necessitate a web designer as the video clips and informative articles they will provide would be enough to guide you.

Be sure to choose a web hosting service that would provide you with significant features that you can implement yourself using their tutorials. An ecommerce website would certainly use shopping carts, inventory and payment software. These features are provided for by most web hosting services but be sure that these features are easy to handle.

Join forums and discussions that will enable you to choose the web host site that will give you service and features commensurate to the investment you have made. Choosing the best web host site, even one that will entail investing a considerable sum of money would be beneficial in the long run if the chosen site will contribute to the development and growth of the online business.

Why Web Servers using UNIX Operating System are much cheaper?

Gone are the days when you have to pay $20.00 to $50.00 a month for a shared web site hosting company to host your site. Nowadays, many people are choosing UNIX web servers to host their websites over Windows. The very first reason is because of its affordability. UNIX web site hosting plans come in cheap price packages. This doesn’t mean that because it’s cheap, users are in the danger of compromising the future of their small business or their integrity because of possible frequent server downtimes. They are not. In fact, many of the web site owners have become aware of the reasons why UNIX web site hosting plans are cheaper than the Windows web site hosting plans. The first one costing only a quarter of what is needed to set-up the second one. Why is it possible? This is merely because anyone setting-up a UNIX web server makes use of the free editions of UNIX system which are under GNU Public License. The Operating System used under the GNU Public License also comes with the source code which a qualified individual can modify to fit his needs.

UNIX Web Server Stability and Performance.

When it comes to stability and performance, UNIX web server tends to perform better under high loads than Windows web server – thus, saving web host companies both time and money for the maintenance.

UNIX Web Server Security.

Since UNIX is an Open Source Operating System, anyone who understands the language that it was written can freely modify it. Any problem like in the areas of security, are easily solved through writing a patch code to the existing program. You may also let other users test the written patch for you. Open Source Systems also has a community of developers and users to help you through sharing of ideas and experiences.

Web Host Features.

When it comes to web hosting features, UNIX web hosting packages comes with a lot of extras. Fantastico script package that is bundled in Cpanel hosting comprised of more or less 80 scripts that you can use freely with your website without extra monthly cost. You can also customize each application to match the theme of your site or provide additional features.

When you are looking for cheap hosting, don’t be afraid to try cheap UNIX web site hosting. Getting a cheap UNIX web site hosting does not mean that you are putting your company or career in danger. Think of the advantages of getting a cheap UNIX web site hosting as an opportunity for you to use your extra money in other areas to grow your business.

If you need cheap UNIX web site hosting, Profit Builder Club is offering cheap UNIX web site hosting. The hosting package comes with Fantastico script and guarantees 99.9% uptime. All hosting accounts come with RVSite Builder Pro, an on-line site builder for everyone who wants to create presence on-line without the knowledge of HTML.

Ads

The most common income generating methods of free web hosts are ads. Ad companies pay these free web hosts to post their ads on the web pages of their members. If you go for a free web host, there will be a big probability that you will have so much ads on your web pages.

Ads may even pop up during the initial registration phase. The terms and conditions page of the registration form usually contains specifications about the ad content for your free web site. Some free web hosts insert a lot of ads that most browsers gets annoyed and will later on avoid the site. Some web hosts even attach pop up ads to your web pages. This doesn’t only irritate visitors, but it can also interfere with the upload of your web site.

Space and Restrictions

When you sign up with a free web host, you can expect that you will have a limited space on the server hard disk. This means that you cannot post all that you want to because it is regulated. Another issue is the restrictions for the types of the files you can upload.

Most free web hosts only accommodate the basic files like, JPEG and MP3 files. This can prove troublesome if you need to upload files of a different nature. It results in you spending time converting them. Another thing, most free web hosts do not offer copyright protection for the files on your site and you will not be able to control the download and the duplication of your posts.

Up and Down Time plus Limited Customer Support

The great thing about paid commercial Web Hosts is that they have a degree of commitment towards their clients. They promise lesser down times (number of hours the site is unavailable) and great customer support. You won’t be able to get that with a free web host. They cannot guarantee a 99.99% Up Time like most paid web hosts do.

Down Time can really affect your website and your business. Your customers won’t be able to access your site and that translates into ‘zero’ revenue for you. Frankly, there is nothing worse than an inaccessible website. Also, if you run into problems while you are using a free web host, you will not be able to expect a timely response. You may have to wait for some time before your queries are answered and when they are, it might not be the answer you are looking for.

These words are enough to trigger the twitch, followed by a barely-contained need to punch something repeatedly (hasn’t happened yet, but I am close).

Why would a business want a web site? I think the question is much too obvious nowadays, but since my twitch keeps reappearing I think I will mention at least the very basic points.

Keep in mind, although these points are very simple, they are not unimportant:

Presence

From the basics, the most basic and yet, the most valid. You MUST have a web site (of course, you will need also a web hosting account and a domain). Would you think to open a business without a phone line? Get real! With a web site your clients can find you, check your contact info, review your products and services and a long etcetera.

Attract New Clients

When a new prospect visits your web site, he/she has the opportunity to know about your organization before anybody talks to him/her. What could be better than a new client that already knows your company and has picked up the phone or sent an email to contact you? The sale is halfway closed!

Service Your Current Clients

Do you have a new product or service? Tell your clients everything about it trough your web site. Changes in prices? Post them in your site. New manuals, upgrades, new location? They must be in your web site! Did you just get a new phone line? Get a BIG announcement in your home page!

Describe in Detail

If your products or services require a detailed or technical explanation, your web site is the best tool. You can post as much information as needed: PDF files, pictures, manuals and whatever you can think of. As you have additional info you can upload it and your clients will be able to instantly find it.

Constant Updating

Already mentioned, but this point is worth elaborating. Each time that something changes in your organization, you have the opportunity to tell all of your clients through your web site. Products, prices, service policies, press releases, anything at all! Did you change your logo? Let your web site show it. Give your site a quick check at least once a year (every 6 months is better) and make changes as required. Let your clients notice you are still there.

Show Off

Yes, your web site lets you show off the kind of work you’ve done for other clients. Ask for testimonials and include them in your web site. Prospects love these since it gives your business credibility (we will talk about the best way to post your testimonials in another column).

Shame on You

To finish, if all these haven’t been able to convince you, think that a web site is really cheap (most web hosting services cost less than a 100 dollars a year). Would you think of doing business with somebody that can’t pay at least that? I would think twice about it.

I could go on with many more important arguments, but I hope you’ve got the idea. Now go get your web site! I am off to get a valium to calm my twitch.