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Criteria of Choosing an Ideal Web Hosting Company
Before we talk about what it takes to be a cheap and good quality web host, let's
get to the fundamental first.
What is a Web Host?
A web host is a service provider that places your web site on a computer which
is connected to the internet. The term for this 'computer' is called a server.
A web hosting provider will typically have a fast connection to the Internet and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide web.
With a well-managed web host, you can free yourself from worrying the up-keep of complicated server technology and proper technical maintenance. That's the whole purpose of the web hosting companies. You should leave the technical work to web hosting professional while you focus on your own internet business.
Let's begin...
Feature Offered
The features that web hosting companies are offering are getting quite standard
nowadays.
The followings are some of the common features you'll see in most web hosting plans:
- Control Panel
Control Panel is an interface where you can access your site on the web server, allowing you to set-up and subsequently update and customize your web site. Though cPanel is by far the most popular control panel, some hosting providers customize their own so that they can up-grade and expand it at will. - Diskspace
A vast majority of sites that don't have tons of graphics, sound and video clips or downloadable files easily fit in 50 MB of disk space. You should always leave yourself some room for growth or check if the host has a bigger 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 consumed when visitors make requests for files on your web site and download them to their personal computers. - Email Account
With POP3 email accounts you can 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 choose a host that supports the latest version to maximize 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 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.
No matter if you are an expert or a novice in web hosting, you need a web host with good customer support system. What is the criteria of an excellent customer support? Let us explain.
- How big is the knowledge base?
This is particularly important for those who want to search for quick answer without seeking direct assistance from customer support staff. Due to the huge database, normally it's searchable. Some 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 useful for beginner.
- Responsive customer service staff.
If you are too lazy to find the answer out of a big pool of database, get the direct answer from someone who knows it. Direct customer support comes in a few forms.
a. Email support
b. Phone support: Normally, sales and technical support uses separate phone line. A good phone support staff knows what your problem is and answers with relevance.
c.Web Host like Lunarpages and Globat even have live chat support. However, it's not how many support channels that are available but how responsive it is of the staff. You can find out the hosting reviews and ratings of each of our Top 10 Cheap Web Host.
Price to Disk Space / Price to Bandwidth Ratio
Are you paying too much for your Web Hosting Plan?
Having done the research on hundreds of web hosting companies, in general, we've
come to this conclusion: the more disk space and bandwidth you are getting,
the more expensive is the monthly price.
To help you understand which price is competitive enough for you to take up the offer, we have categorized 5 different price range. For each price range, a score of maximum of 10 is assigned. To understand the concept behind this, please refer to the details here.
Popularity
A web host might have the best feature offered, unbeatable customer support
and reliability in place but without an effective marketing plan, it will go
bust too. Let's face it. If a web hosting provider does not have sufficient
members and steady growth of new members, it's very difficult to survive in
this highly competitive industry.
We judge the popularity of a particular web hosting provider by looking at the number of awards won, the reviews of other websites and the Alexa traffic ranking.
All the hosting providers listed on our Top 10 Cheap Web Hosting Directory are among the top 40,000 most visited websites in the world.
Reliability, Speed and Uptime Guarantee
Nothing can hurt you more than this: your visitors come to your web site only
to find that it's not accessible. You lose credibility and possibly even a sale.
If your web host does not guarantee at least a 99% uptime, leave the web host
now!
To ensure maximum uptime, installation of redundant back-up systems is essential. Each web host has their own management systems to minimize downtime. "Redundant" means that if any of the Internet connections get interrupted, the alternate Internet connection will take over.
We use Alertra software to monitor the uptime of each of our top 10 web hosts.
As for speed, even though routing, web server set up and local area networks play a part in determining the speed of a site, the main concern of how fast your site is depends very much on the types of network connections.
Many hosting providers still connect to the Internet through T1, or T3 connections. This is not the case for our top 10 hosts- they are using OC (Optical Carrier) lines.
A T1 line will offer data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbps (megabits per second), while a T3 line can supply data transfer rates of 43Mbps. OC-1 refers to a circuit that transmits 51.85Mbps. Higher levels are multiples of that speed. Ultra-High Speed OC3 and OC12 lines offers 155Mbps and 622Mbps respectively. Some hosting providers have connections to major internet backbones at the speed of OC48 (2488Mbps) and OC96 (4976Mbps).
Top 10 Cheap Web Hosting Directory - Provides extensive review of top 10 web hosting providers.
Website Hosting Directory - Directory of reliable web hosting services and resources.
Domain Web Hosting Checker - Find the right web hosting solution for you.
Web Design and Hosting - Free Web Hosting Perks That Will Perk Up Your Web Site
If you've got or are considering a web hosting account with PHP and mySQL support, you'll find a wealth of free programs and scripts to take advantage of their powerful combined capabilities.
Website Sitebuilders: Easy to use Website builders Come with a Price
Professional web designers don't come cheap. A good web designer can easily charge you $1000 or more for a five page website. This high cost leads many people to tackle web design for themselves. How hard can it be? Get yourself an HTML editor, throw up a website and voila! Your website is live right? Wrong! There is a lot of knowledge you need to develop before you can get your self made website onto the internet.
CHMOD - Undertanding File Permissions on a Unix-Based Server
The basic command for changing file permissions in unix based operating systems is the 'chmod' command. This command is executed with a set of parameters after it. With most FTP clients, you can simply select the filename you want to change the permissions of, right click, and choose the chmod command.
Avoid Getting Ripped Off By A Hosting Company
Chances are if you host multiple domains or websites you are spending too much money at your current hosting provider. Other hosting companies increase their profits by forcing you to create an additional hosting account every time you want to host a new domain or website. Let's say you have five (5) websites and they each cost you $10.00 a month. It is obvious you are spending $50 a month to host those five (5) websites, but did you know that you are getting ripped off?
How to Know When It is Time for Your Website to Move On to Dedicated Servers
Knowing when it is time to move onto a dedicated server includes many variables and requires you to answer a variety of questions. While dedicated servers are great because only you and your business will be using them, they are expensive and require someone to manage them, which costs more money. Evaluate if you have all of the elements required for a dedicated server before making plans to move onto one. Below are several things you should consider first.
Dedicated Server vs. Co-location Web Hosting
So - you know shared hosting no longer cuts it, and your single office connection is not enough to host a web server - so which is best, leasing a dedicated server or buying your own server and co-locating it someone's data center? Difference For those that are unsure of the difference, here it is in a nutshell. When you co-locate, you are simply renting space within someone else's facility to store your own server or servers. It's like a high tech gym locker that you are renting all or part of to house your servers. You either ship or deliver your server to your provider. Additional services provided with co-location vary from host to host but it certainly won't include the actual server. With a dedicated server you are getting all the features of co-location, plus the actual web server itself. Which is better? While it certainly depends on your particular needs, and there are excellent situations for both the dedicated server option is quickly becoming a better choice in more and more cases. If you already own a web server, or cluster that you prefer to use, then obviously co-location may be your best choice. If you are considering buying new equipment and shipping it off for co-location - please reconsider. The prices and equipment available in dedicated hosting these days are outstanding plus relieve you of the burden of hardware. Most hosts keep identical spare parts on hand for the types of servers used and are quick to react if something fails. Depending on your arrangement with a colocation deal hardware failure could mean paying to have a server shipped back (or you drive to get it), having it fixed yourself then sending it back to the data center. Please refer following web sites for useful resources related to web site hosting: http://www.vipwh.com http://www.thehostingguide.com
Attracting Extra Web Hosting Customers By Targeting Cities, i.e. New York Web Hosting
These searchers are looking for a hosting company in a particular city, state, or country, but given the proper message they can often be convinced to try your hosting company. Afterall, given the nature of the web hosting industry, the actual location of your web hosts is not that important. The datacenter they use and the support team are really the 2 most important items.
Bound To Your Old Expensive Web Host by Fear?
You're not alone! Many people are bound to the old web host they've used for years because they're afraid of the hassle of switching. Customers will pay rates three or four or even ten times greater than what they have to, just because they're terrified that switching will be too complicated or that they'll end up losing their site altogether.
Good Web Hosting ? What Is It?
With hundreds of web hosting companies to choose from today it can be hard to know which ones are actually worth using. Below is a guide of things to look for in a web host:
The 2 Sides of Reseller Web Hosting
In the first case the customer is really looking for a large shared hosting plan that allows multiple domains. More frequently in the industry you see the term "Multi-Domain account" to refer to these plans. These customers can be webmasters with a network of websites, web designers, or a company that wants separate websites for their different brands. Most people doing business on the internet have more then 1 website. Hosting companies have recently taken notice to this and started offering "multiple domain" accounts. Before customers were left with the choice of a full blown Reseller plan, dedicated server, or multiple hosting accounts.
What to Look for in a Free Hosting Provider
The first thing that you must realize when looking for a free hosting provider is that nothing is truly "free". There will be some sacrifices?
Free Web Hosting
There is no concept of free lunch in the world, this is exactly true when we talk about free Web hosting for the webmasters. Before going ahead we must talk about what hosting exactly is; Hosting is the process of storing files onto a web server so that it can be accessible to viewers through a web browser.
Elements of Web Hosting
When you first start out trying to get a site on the Internet everything seems so confusing. Obtuse acronyms flow freely through the 'Beginner Friendly' information sites and definitions can be hard to come across. The main reason for this is that the Internet and the process of getting a website online is really very simple, and once people get past the first stumbling steps they rarely remember the difficulty they once had, which leads to them being unable to understand the next wave of dot com newbies.
Internet Domain Registration - Establishing and Transferring Your Domain Name
If you're in business, one of the most important things to you may be your ability to establish an internet presence. Operating some type of functional web site for your business helps your customers find you, can present additional marketing opportunities through e-commerce, and offers advertising opportunities that you can not get elsewhere. Companies that do not have a web site lose business to companies that do all the time.
GBs and Gbs of Web Hosting
What is web hosting you ask? Web hosting refers to the service that a webmaster provides to ensure your website and email at your domain name stay up and running 24/7. Think of web hosting as renting space on a special computer that stays on all the time to keep your precious domain name up and running. The computer that hosts the files for your website is called a web server. A web server is really just a computer that hosts the contents of your website either in files. These files can be in any number of different formats, but that is a whole nother topic in and of itself.
Choosing a Right Hosting Solution
You must have done all the hard works for developing your website but when it comes selecting your host you may face trouble that it does not have all the features which is required by your site. I know there are 100's of instance where a newbie or startup website owner suffered heavy losses in terms of money, delayed projects, financial debts and other things. So it is important to do some research before choosing a right hosting solution, so that you can give your business a kick start and escaped from possibilities of financial debts.
Advanced Hosting for the Mission Critical Web Presence
As companies that conduct their business online have proliferated, hosting of those websites that provide the primary point of contact for transaction of business has become highly mission critical; having these sites go offline or perform poorly not only loses revenue but also detracts from the company's image and loses customer loyalty.
How Multiple Server Hosting impacts your websites uptime
This article describes the technology behind multiple server hosting and how you may utilize it to maximize your site's security and uptime
Web Hosting Operating Systems Explained
A few time ago appeared a lot disagreements between opinions on the internet regarding, which is the best operating system for web hosting. There are people who hate windows, there are people who love FreeBSD and many others.
7 Key Points to Consider When Choosing a Web Host
With literally thousands of web hosting companies in the industry all vieing for your business, carefully consider these key points to ensure you make the most well informed decision possible.