Choosing a Web Host: Research Before You Decide

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by Jaako

Choosing a Web Host: Research Before You Decide

Hundreds of hosting providers are competing these days to attract customers in different ways. In most cases, their offers look very similar, especially to those who are new to web hosting, making the selection of a good hosting provider a very difficult and confusing task.

If you are new to web hosting, you first need to know the basics of web hosting. You should know the answers to the following questions:
1. What is a web host?
2. What are the available host server platforms? What are the differences between server types?
3. What is the bandwidth?
4. What is a domain name? How Can I get one?
5. How can I create web pages?
6. What are scripting languages? What can I do with them?
7. What is FTP?
8. What features do I need for my website?

If you don’t know the answers to the above questions, you can find answers and hints here.

If you are only intending to build a small and simple personal website to publish your pet’s (or family) pictures, then you don’t need to worry, almost any hosting plan will meet your needs. You can go for the cheapest provider, even free ones.

However, If you are about to build a business site to sell goods or services, then you have to be careful about all the details of your new web host. You must read, research, compare and then decide. You don’t want to spend your time, effort and money to attract customers to a website that is not up to your business requirements; this will really hit your image.

It is certainly important to study the features required in the hosting plan. You must know what does storage capacity, bandwidth, platform and scripting languages mean, and how important each one is for your new website, but this is not enough, not at all.

After you shortlist the candidate hosts to only include the ones that meet your requirements, do some research on providers’ history, read some unbiased reviews about their services and explore some customer experience. These are the factors that should make your final decision.

Be careful when researching such information about a provider. Performing a quick search on google about “best web hosting” or “top 10 hosting companies” will not directly return the right and honest information. Most of hosting reviews sites are not actually providing honest reviews. Instead of giving it based on the quality of service, the highest ranks and best reviews are actually given to the companies paying higher commissions to their affiliates. I’ve seen this on quite a lot of review sites.

So, after you have narrowed your web host choices to several providers, you’ll need to take a more in-depth look at them before deciding which one you should go with. You have to perform a thorough evaluation process which might take hours, or even days, for each choice. Sources of information that can support your evaluation process can be in:
1. At least three honest and unbiased review sites.
2. Several reviews in more than one web hosting forum.
3. Direct feedback from real customers of the candidate providers.

Web Hosting Review Sites
Hosting directories and review sites are useful in the process of narrowing your search, especially those who provide an automatic search utility based on price, space, bandwidth, OS, etc. which can save your time and effort in this aspect.

Avoid review sites with “top 10” sort of recommendations. Go for those which provide user reviews, and read the reviews carefully. Compare reviews and user opinions from as much review sites as you can, at least three. As stated above, be careful when reading customer reviews as some hosts might encourage their new customers to write favorable reviews by offering some advantages.

Web Hosting Forums
Open forums are important source of reviews and customer experience. They are open places where customers can write their reviews and opinions about their hosts. However, they can have the same problem as review sites: a provider can write very positive reviews about his own company. The opposite might also happen: competitors can write very negative reviews about their competitors. In some forums, this activity is not permitted. Moderators are strictly monitoring the forums for such activities and deal with them in away that preserve their honesty and credibility, but this cannot guarantee that all the reviews are 100% accurate and honest. Keep in mind: what fits with other users’ needs might not fit with your needs.

Search for “web hosting forum” in any search engine and you will get hundreds of them. My favorite one is www.webhostingtalk.com. Almost all forums have a search services from which you can search for your candidate hosting provider’s name or URL. If you get results for your search, read as much related threads as possible. If you don’t get results you can post a thread asking for customer reviews about the intended provider(s). Again, don’t base your final decision on one opinion. Read reviews in different threads on more than one forum.

Feedback from Customers
Some web hosts list samples of their customers. Others have forums on their websites for support, where you will see examples of issues raised by real customers and how did the company dealt with. On those forums you might get addresses of some customers. Try to contact those customers to find out what they think about the service and support.

At this point, you can make a decision based on a combination of the gathered information. You will most probably be satisfied with the host you choose.

Abbas Alafoo is the creator of www.website-hostings.net, a collection of articles and tutorials about web hosting, design, development, promotion and administration.

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Avoid The 10 Biggest Divorce Mistakes.

Edit: Wow…I did not know how to talk when I made this video. Pokemon are property of Nintendo and Creatures Inc. All other property belongs to other respected owners. Narrated by me. Songs/Sounds: The Pokerap – artist unknown The Final Countdown – Europe “Watch the power of Aura” – Sean Schemmel – Super Smash Bros. Brawl Thanks to YouTube for hosting this.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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How To Find Web Hosting That Doesn’t Leave You Broke

How To Find Web Hosting That Doesn’t Leave You Broke

If you have an online business or maybe even several like I do, web hosting can be a significant expense not to mention the fact that reliable web hosting is absolutely crucial to the success of your business. All it takes is a server going down during a big marketing promotion and your reputation suffers. In this article we will explore some of the things to look for in a quality web hosting company for a fair price.

First off let’s get some basics out of the way for those who may not fully understand what web hosting is. Web hosting is simply the place that your website’s files and documents are located which allows your site to be pulled up on the internet. This is why it is crucial that the web host be reliable, if there server isn’t working neither are you.

When you are looking for web hosting online there are so many to choose from that it can be an overwhelming task to try to hone it down to a handful to consider. You need to keep a few things in mind before you get started however, and the first is don’t just go with the cheapest because of that reason. They are the cheapest web host because they aren’t giving certain features so you need to identify basic features that you need before you start shopping.

Some of the basic features that you will want from your web hosting company will be a choice of programming languages, databases, email addresses, bandwidth allowance, disk space and how many domains you are allowed to host. You will also want to know what kind of server and administration or control panel is offered, basically your choices will be Linux or Windows based servers. I prefer Linux servers with Cpanel installed because I am familiar with it and it makes my job a whole lot easier. Linux systems are usually less expensive than comparable Windows web hosting services plus they will offer the MYSQL and PHP programs that you will need for your online business. Most Linux based programming and databases are free, which is another reason why servers offering Linux are less expensive.

It is nearly impossible to find inexpensive web hosting with a Windows based server due to the fact that it cost the hosting company so much to get it in the first place and like anything else in life, that expense is passed on to the end user. To get a Windows based system at the same price as a Linux one you will probably have to give up many features so bear that in mind as well.

When assessing the reliability of a web hosting company do a little research on them, don’t just take their claims of 99% up time on their sales page as gospel. There are many web hosting companies out there that allow spammers to operate on their servers and they end up causing problems for everyone on that server, especially if you are on a shared server that is also sharing a block of IP addresses. You could end up having your site delisted and banned and have your emails blocked because of something someone else is doing.

One way that I like to check out hosting companies support is to either email them or if they have it enabled, have a live chat with them and ask them all my questions. If you email a web hosting company and it takes them awhile to get back to you when you are a prospective client what kind of service do you think they will give you once they have your money?

Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. For more on inexpensive Web Hosting or other web hosting issues go to http://www.virtualwebhostingplus.com

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Web Host: Basics to Know

Web Host: Basics to Know

A web hosting is a service that offers individuals, organizations and users with online systems for storing information, images, video, or other content on a web server. These informations can be accessed by World Wide Web and allows the public to view them.

Web hosting is directly related with domain names. The World Wide Web is a huge collection of web site where all the sites are hosted on computers called web servers all over the world. A web site is available 24×7 where one can pay to have 24×7 keen internet connection to an in-house web server. Many people choose to host their sites with a web hosting provider. Web hosting clients simply upload their web sites to a shared or dedicated web server, which ISP maintains to ensure a steady fast connection to the Internet. A server is a unique computer where web sites are hosted, and stored and makes them available to rest of the world.

Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server for hosting a website. They own huge space on the server, which they assign it to their customers offering Internet connectivity, usually in a data center.

The most basic is webpage and small-scale file hosting service, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are regularly delivered to the Web. Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer this service for free to their subscribers and also get such hosting cheaply. Web page hosting is usually enough only for personal homepages. Complex website uses more wide-ranging package to offer database support and forum’s etc. These facilities permit the customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management. For e-commerce, SSL is also necessary. The host also offers a Web interface control panel (e.g. cPanel, Hosting Controller, Plesk) for running the web server and installing scripts as well as other facilities like e-mail.

Types of Web Hosting:-

Free Web Hosting Service: Extremely limited when compared to paid hosting. This is typically an advertisement-supported web hosting service.

Shared Web Hosting Service: In this, Web site is placed on the same server as many other sites which may range from a few to hundreds or thousands websites. All domains share common server resources, such as RAM and the CPU and IP.

Reseller Web Hosting: This service allows clients to became web hosts themselves. Resellers are those who take affiliate with as a provider and serve as web host.

Virtual Dedicated Server: Here a server is shared into virtual servers. Each user feels like they’re on their own dedicated server, but they’re actually sharing a server with many other users.

Dedicated Hosting Service: In this, the user gets his/her own web server and gains full control over it. The user gets the root or administrator access according to Linux or Windows hosting.

Colocation Web Hosting Service: It is similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the server. The hosting company offers physical space for the server and takes care of the server.

Clustered hosting: This service uses multiple servers, hosting the same content for better resource utilization. This make the website easily manageable and fast.

Specific Web services: The other web services are as follows:

File hosting service: hosts only files not web pages.

Image hosting service: hosts only images.

Video hosting service: hosts only video.

Blog hosting service: hosts blogs only.

Features:-

The features that web hosting companies are offering are receiving absolutely regular nowadays. The following are some of the common features seen in most web hosting plans:

Control Panel: Control panel is an edge where you can access your site on the web server, allowing you to set up and then update and modify your web site. Though cPanel is the most popular control panel, some hosting providers modify their own so that they can upgrade and expand it.

Diskspace: A enormous popularity of sites that don’t have tons of graphics, sound and video clips or downloadable files simply fit in 50 MB of disk space. You should constantly confirm if the host has a superior plan in case you need to upgrade.

Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the amount of data transmitted or received through a unit of time. In web hosting, bandwidth is keen when visitors make requirements for files on your web site and download them to their personal computers.

Email Account: With POP3 email accounts you check email from Outlook, Netscape Mail, Eudora or any other Email Software.

Scripting Language: As all our top 10 listings are using Unix and Linux Platform, Php, Perl and CGI are the languages we are talking about here. It is best to select a host that supports the latest version to expand the latest web technologies for the fee that you pay.

Database: If Your web site is going to store a lot of data that should be dynamically accessible (like user accounts, stock prices, maps, interactive news, message boards and forum etc.), you’ll need to look for an account that offers a database. MYSQL is a powerful and most popular database program that offers a database. MYSQL is a powerful and most popular database program that runs on the Linux operation system. It is able to handle million of entries all at once. Its flexibility and speed allow you to also store logs and pictures. MYSQL is designed to scale well under heavy traffic conditions and is ideal for database-intensive or e-commerce-enabled web sites.

Customer Service/ Support:

Even though, if you are a professional or a beginner in web hosting, you require a web host with good customer support system.

Knowledge Base: This is mainly essential for those who want to search for quick answer without seeking direct assistance from customer support staff. Due to the enormous database, typically it’s searchable. Web hosting providers will even make your life easier by making a video tutorial guiding you step by step in setting up your new account. Very helpful for beginner.

Receptive customer service staff: Direct customer supports are explained as follows:

1. Email Support

2. Phone Support

3. Web Host / Live Chat support

Other Factors:-

Price to Disk Space / Price to Bandwidth Ratio: Generally, if you require more disk space and bandwidth, the monthly price will be more expensive.

Popularity: A web host might have the best feature accessible, supreme customer support and consistency in place but without an effective marketing plan, it will go out of business. If a web hosting provider does not have sufficient members and stable growth of new members, it’s very hard to carry on in this highly competitive industry.

Reliability, Speed and Uptime Guarantee: If your web host does not guarantee at least a 99% uptime, leave the web host now!

To ensure highest uptime, installation of redundant back-up systems is necessary. Each web host has their own management systems to reduce downtime. “Redundant” means that if any of the Internet connections get interrupted, the alternate Internet connection will take over.

As for speed, although routing, web server set up and local area networks play a part in determining the speed of a site, the major importance of how quick your site is depends enormously on the types of network connections. A number of hosting providers still connect to the Internet through T1, or T3 connections. Our top 10 hosts are using OC (optical Carrier) lines.

A T1 line will provide data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbps (megabits per second), whereas a T3 line can furnish data transfer rates of 43Mbps. OC-1 offers to a circuit that transmits 51.85Mbps. Higher levels are multiples of that speed. Ultra-High Speed OC3 and OC12 lines provide 155Mbps and 622Mbps respectively. Some hosting providers have connections to main internet backbones at the speed of OC48 (2488Mbps) and OC96 (4976Mbps).

QualiSpace is the Reliable Web Hosting and ICANN Accredited Domain Registration Company which provide 24×7 customer support and services.

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Finding A Cheap Web Hosting Solution For Your Needs

Finding A Cheap Web Hosting Solution For Your Needs

For you to get a cheap web hosting then you have to be very careful and keen. There so many web hosting services available to the client. In case of the cost of hosting goes beyond the income of the website then that web hosting is expensive.  For good web hosting to be cheap to the client it should save the client exclusive service that might make the client to turn to your competitor. A good cheap web hosting should have the following; unlimited hosting space. This saves the client from going to another web hosting to get other storage services at an extra cost. The band with should also be unlimited to save the client money. This allows all the clients traffics who need something from the website to access easily. The web host must have unlimited Email account. This makes the client not to hire extra people to give him a more email account. This adds up the cost to the client. The web host should have unlimited data base space. This enables the client to get enough space for his website. He does not need to go and hire more space from another web host for his database.

There are lots of companies that give you cheap Web hosting & design. These days while it is essential to try & save some dollars here & there it makes little sense to try or get company who can give you cheap hosting & design as a full package. Thus, what you must look out for? Just as you get the cheap web hosting & design it does not mean you need to take cut in quality & have the website that does not stack up to competition. Your web site should be able to deliver the message you would like to deliver. It means that when a customer has found the website, then your message must load up fast & deliver this information to customer in a clear & concise way.

 

Thus you are asking what you can expect from the cheap web hosting. Apart from having the website, which delivers the message to customer and you will not get huge amounts of images or pages. You will just have three to five pages of content that is sufficient for you to tell the customers and how they will contact you and find more information regarding your service or product. There are lots of companies who are giving cheap Web hosting. Lot of larger web hosting companies may offer you the free web site design in case you agree and pay for full years hosting up front. This is important as in case you are in the business and your site was down for a reason then you have to contact designer who looks after your site and get the problem fixed when possible. And this is better than to have to deal with the large web hosting company, which is just interested in taking money each month & not giving you with one on one service, which you need.

Make sure that the cheap web hosting plan that you have chosen meets your standards, and of course your budget at the same time, visit http://www.hostreviewgeeks.com/ to get help finding the best yet cheap hosting service for your website.

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www.tyroneshum.com This is part two of showing you best and the most affordable and cheap hosting solutions for videos. In the previous video, I’ve showed you the free solutions or the solutions which doesn’t cost you anything. In today’s video, I want to show you all the solutions that I currently use in my business to host it which cost just a little bit money. The first one is the Amazon S3 and it’s basically a service which allows you to host hundreds and hundreds of gigs of data which is what for hosting videos and audios for the blog. Considering it’s cheap, Amazon S3 could give so much space to store a lot of space for 15cents per gigabyte. On average, my mp3s are probably around about 30 to 40megs at most so I can be able to store up to 300 mp3s before I have to pay 15cents for the mp3s so that’s how cheap it is. Also, since it isn’t very easy to use, Amazon also offers a tool which acts like its FTP server to upload data onto the Amazon S3 web service and it’s called Amazon S3 Bucket Explorer which you can purchase once-off. Now, to distribute videos all across the Internet, multiple websites and multiple video services, I currently use Traffic Geyser to also distribute not just only videos but also my podcasts, social bookmarks and also articles throughout the website, throughout the web. This is really a good piece of tool if you can afford to use it. It is per month but it’s really powerful once you see how it’s used. It’s very, very powerful once you
Video Rating: 5 / 5

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Web Hosting Reviews on-line – Determining the best Host

Web Hosting Reviews on-line – Determining the best Host

Those who are in search regarding the precise host shall do ideal by reading on website hosting service providers first, by simply consulting a authentic web hosting review webpage. If you are about to propose your organization using the web and you simply will have ones own webpage, you will have to discover the best suited host, and avoid complications in the future. The online host is a just one, which in turn manages the visibility and convenience of the webpage over the internet. Just how your own data are easily down loaded by your blog post site visitors and the way your web site is easily seen depends on the sort of provider you could have. Hence, prior to deciding to choose a web site coordinator you ought to investigation in to the several products of each one and determine if they are going to meet the requirements of the future site.

A number of hosting companies offer trial variants with their companies, so it’s not necessary to spend anything just before playing their deals first. This is a wonderful strategy for finding out in case the internet hosting packages are attuned towards the requirements of your website along with your online business. Then again, one of the more suitable strategies you can examine hosting services is to find genuine internet hosting reviews on-line. There are several ınternet sites specialized in web host and website hosting services, and in many instances, these sites deliver hosting reviews also. In addition , they make suggestions, based on the efficiency and customer support offered via the webhost. It’s also imperative that you simply locate a reputable websites, which will be able to give you a good and comprehensive comprehension of the services marketed by web hosts.

Because there are numerous kinds of web hosting, from PHP internet hosting to business hosting, you must recognise which web hosting type meets your company best. A great number of internet hosting evaluations are categorize the hosting kinds separately, so you’ll be able to examine the services presented by each web hosting kind. Be more successful to identify which among the hosting services will offer you endless bandwith, infinite sub domains, and endless email options. Any time you need top-notch, round-the-clock customer care, or if you happen to involve an uptime guarantee of not less than 99.9%, you can quickly recognize which web hosts are deserving of your consideration.

You might have some distinct conditions in obtaining a web host, like your spending budget and the availability of a money-back guarantee. You will be looking for easy-to-install software packages to achieve a rightly-developed and practical webpage. You will find web host suppliers that offer money-back guarantees of up to 45 days, which are often included in many web hosting reviews over the internet. If you are an advocate of environment preservation furthermore, you will be aware which among the list of hosting companies in the present day have gone “green”, utilizing solar panel to power their servers and their workplaces.

Author writes for Hostican review, hostnine review and site5 review

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