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Why is it so important to find a reputable host and not to sign up with the hosting provider that only seems to be everything you wish?

The answer to this question could be reduced to a single word: problems. Hosting your site with unreliable provider will lead to tedious and nerves-consuming problems that will often remain unsolved. Here are some real life examples of problems customers are experiencing with their providers:

“After signing up for their hosting package I haven’t heard from them for days. 22 days after signing up with the first host I received a welcome message from them stating my account has been activated and my credit card billed. I contacted them explaining I decided not to have an account with them and asking them for a refund. Needless to say, again I haven’t heard from them for days and when I finally got in touch with them they were beating around the bush and more days passed. all the experience with them took so much of my time and health that it made me regret I ever bumped into their hosting offer.”

“With this company you definitely don’t get what you paid for. I wish I had checked better what reliable and honest hosts really were before giving my money to this one. It’s been nothing but a disappointment.”

“Their support insisted that the site was working fine. This was despite the fact that ANYONE could see clearly that the site was not working, just by clicking on ANY page.”

“On Friday, May 5 the web site went down. I sent a request to tech support to bring it back up. I got back a response stating that it is a known issue related to a server move. The problem should be resolved within 24 hours - they said. 24 hours had passed but my site was still down. It finally came up after 4 days but not for long. The site was offline once again by upcoming weekend, this time with a 404 error. Never been really informed what the exact reason for the downtime was. I can assure you this happens on a regular basis.”

“It was supposed to be managed hosting but this company managed only my money. I ended up doing all the work by myself with scarce support from their side.”

In this article I tried to point out just some of the numerous real life problems you may experience once you sign up with incompetent web hosting provider. For this reason detecting which hosting providers are reliable and proven is a must thing to do in order to avoid unpleasant issues.
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It was not that long ago that when someone mentioned the word “web” it could be assumed that they were referring to the fragile creations of spiders. But today, the word web refers to something utterly different – an expanse so great we can barely understand it. The web refers to the World Wide Web – or the Internet – a creation that does not take up any physical space but still holds an enormous amount of information; all of which can is funneled to and from the network of computers worldwide that access the Internet. For most of today’s business, there is no true success without an online presence; keeping pace with this fact, companies small and large continue to craft their online persona through the creation of a website. As part of this explosion in websites has come the ever-expanding need for web hosting – a service that is offered through a network of providers.

Web hosting is offered through a company – or individual - that has direct access to the Internet through a server – a computer that gives and receives information to other computers. Like a landlord, the company that offers web hosting rents out space on their server to your company’s website. If you rent this space through your web host but have your own domain name – or website address – then this company is considered to be a virtual web host. A non-virtual web host still gives you space on their server but through their domain name or website address.

Not all web hosting is the same, however, and there are certain things that you should look for in order to get your money’s worth of service. First and foremost, an effective web host should be connected to the Internet almost all of the time. Granted – there may be times when your web host must be offline for service - or is booted offline due to a technical issue - but in general web hosts should be up and running at all times; you are paying for this consistency so that visitors to your website can access it without fail. A web host stores all of your data on its server and should handle all technical difficulties that may arise with responsiveness and professionalism.

Web hosting comes at a variety of prices – from a couple of hundred dollars to thousands of dollars per year. For websites that receive quite a bit of traffic, it is worth the money for a reputable and comprehensive host that can handle the myriad of services you require. For those with smaller businesses or those who have created their own personal web page, a smaller, less expensive web host will undoubtedly deliver all that is needed and a price that is affordable.
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Domain registration is generally very easy. In fact you can simply contact your local domain registrar and give your details like name, address, contact info and of course the name of the domain you want registered and your domain gets registered. Alternatively you can simply go online to your domain registrar’s website and if the facility is provided just fill out a simply online registration form with your name and other details and submit to register your domain. It’s as simple as that.

The problem arrives generally for most of us after the domain has been registered. We keep hearing all these words like name servers, domain pointing and forwarding, domain locking and other things which make it all a nightmare. But it is not as bad as you think. Domain management, once you understand the various aspects to it, is actually a very simply task. We look at some of the aspects in domain registration and management which you might have to go through while setting up your website.

Name Servers
Name servers are probably the most common words used after you have registered a domain. Your hosting company will tell you to change your domain name servers to their address in order for your web hosting service to function properly. So what are name servers?

To put it in simple language, name servers are the name of your server. It basically tells a domain where your website files are located so every time someone types your domain name in their browsers, the domain exactly knows where to go to show your website files – your homepage etc.

Name Servers generally look like this:

Assuming you are hosting with xyz hosting company then your name servers should generally be:

NS1.XYZ.COM
NS2.XYZ.COM

Note the NS could be followed by 3 or 4 depending on your hosting company. Your hosting company will generally provide their name servers to you when you register with them.

Domain Forwarding / Domain Redirect
Domain forwarding or also know as Domain redirect means if you have multiple domains registered and you want one of your domains to quite simply point to another domain that you have as an active website.

This technique allows you to have a single website be available under multiple domains. For example you can register your domain in both .com and .net format and then make the .net domain address forward to your .com website. That way you don’t have to spend on having two different websites hosted for each of your domain extensions.

Domain Locking
This is quite new to the world of domains but is a very important one and you should always be aware of your domain’s status – i.e. whether it is locked or unlocked.

Now, how does domain locking make a difference to you? Firstly if your domain is not locked, then malicious software or hackers have the ability to shift the domain in to their name or shift the domain’s name servers on to their web site which could cause lot of embarrassment to you. Not just that in some cases, hackers can pull the domain from your domain registrar to theirs, giving them full control of your domain.

In general you should always make sure your domain is in locked status. Of course when you need to change the domain’s name servers etc for your own use then you can unlock a domain. But always make sure moment your work is done and the name servers or any other information you are trying to change has been completed, immediately lock your domain. If you can’t lock or unlock your domain, please contact your domain registrar regarding this.
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Web Hosting FAQ - Part 3

What is full-service web hosting?

For companies whom choose to offer the so called “Full-service” it generally meant that they made available to their customers the whole or full range of services ranging from offering of additional web spaces, bandwidths, emails for a web site, etc. Other additional services may include web design services, web site content maintenance services and 24/7 toll free phone support,

What is shared (virtual) web hosting?

With virtual web hosting, basically, a web hosting subscriber will have his or her own IP address with the virtual hosting. The final website displayed on the web will not be any different from any other websites.In the case of shared hosting, this is how almost 98% of websites are currently hosted.

Basically, the web hosting provider will have more than one servers (super fast computers constantly connected to the web that run on server based OS applications such as Apache or IIS) that will run multiple websites belonging to many different webmaster. (they all shared one server)

Unless the website is very popular with very high bandwidth requirement or that the number of web hit to the site is exceptionly high, it usually is the best way to host due primarily to the cost of hosting compared to dedicated hosting, co-location or DIY hosting.

What are PHP, SQL, Java, IP, etc.?

These are very commonly used web hosting acronyms referring to the various features such as database (SQL), programming scripts (PHP, Java),service providers address (IP), etc.

All these terms will usually be reflected within the technical specification of a web hosting plan, deciding their respective value and provision within a particular offered hosting plan.

What do the numbers listed under “space” and “transfer” means ?

Space, as the definition goes, means how much data you can “stored”. It is just like you are given a room of different sizes and each different size rooms will have different storage capacity. The technical terms for space is usually listed in megabytes (MB, millions of bytes).

A single letter takes up one byte. HTML files are usually small (about 25,000 bytes) but pictures and programs can get quite big. Your scripts, emails and stats will also take up space on your host.

Transfer on the other hand generally meant the amount of “data” visitors to a site can download before reaching the initially set monthly limit.(based on the type of hosting plan you purchased). The main unit symbol for transfer is usually listed in gigabytes (billions of bytes).

Once the transfer limit is reached for the month, a hosting subscriber will immediately be informed by the hosting provider on the need to pay extra for additional transfer at higher rates.

An example, if an average visitor to your site views 3 HTML pages of 20 KB (thousands of bytes) each and 8 small embedded pictures of 10 KB each, and you get 500 visitors per day, you will require at least (3 * 20 + 8 * 10) * 500 * 30 = 2,100,000 KB = 2.1 GB of transfer per month.
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A web hosting plan usually comes with a fixed price tag attached to it that often appears hefty to the buyer; seldom do they realize that taking a few steps can help minimize costs. While some of these steps require some effort on the buyer’s part, others are simply a matter of common sense and deductive logic.

General Introduction:

Even the most active people find themselves turning lazy when it comes to choosing the right web hosting plan; as a result, they land up paying more than what they are supposed to. Of course, most web hosting plans deliver more features (and some of them are absolutely not required), but staying a little conscious on a few aspects of any web hosting plan may help in saving further.

Tips for saving money while availing a hosting service plan:

* Step 1: Instead of pouncing upon the web hosting plan that appears first, it is always better to shop around to find out whether the same is available with another company providing similar services. Comparison-shopping saves money, and online searches are probably the best way for finding the best web hosting plan.

* Step 2: Often people tend to pay more as service fees if they are not computer savvy, the reason being the setup issues. Certain companies offer a free setup service; therefore, instead of paying a great bottom line price and an enormous fee up front to establish the service, a free setup sounds logical.

* Step 3: Set up and monthly maintenance fees are pretty straightforward; what create the trouble are the hidden costs that these so-called cheap inexpensive web hosting service companies belt-out later. A careful consideration of the options in a web-hosting package reduces the costs, and in case services are required in addition to web hosting, there are companies that are capable of combining all possible Internet services that a person may require.

* Step 4: When all the points have been verified, it’s time to know the company that offers the most competitive price and a plan that fits most the needs. Some of these companies qualify for everything apart from server down time, which means less revenue for the owner of the website. Thus, if one truly wants to minimize costs with a web-hosting package, saving a few dollars is probably not worth the reputation of the business.
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Cheap Web Hosting Package

There are many affordable web hosting packages available today. How do you decide which one is right for you? Even when the price is important, you should never buy your package based on this factor alone. Remember the old adage “You get what you pay for”.

If you know what to look for when shopping for a cheap web hosting package, getting the right one for your needs is easy. Just make sure to check out the following:

1. Disk space and bandwidth limits

Some packages offer very limited amount of disk space and low traffic volume. The hosting company will charge you extra for additional disk space and bandwidth. Even if your website is small at the moment, you will need some extra space to allow for its future growth.

2. Included domain name

Unless you already have one, you will need a domain name for your website. The domain name can cost you between $6 and $30 a year depending on the registrar. If you decide to use private registration to hide your personal data in the domain names registry you will have to pay around $20 a year on top of the regular registration fee.

3. Included email accounts and mailbox size

Most web hosting companies offer email as a part of their packages. If you need to have email in yours, decide how many addresses you will need. Make sure that the package you are getting provides enough email addresses and adequate mailbox capacity.

4. FTP access

You will need to upload different files to your website. Check whether you will have an FTP access to your server - some companies will only provide a web browser-based file upload tool. It’s always better to have more than one way of transferring files to your server.

5. Dynamic scripts support

If you will have anything other than simple HTML pages on your website, you will need you web server to support dynamic scripts such as PHP, CGI or Perl.

6. Technical support

You need to have access to tech support whenever you require it. A good hosting company will provide you with 24/7 phone and email support even for the smallest packages.

7. How to close your account

If you are not satisfied with your package, you should be able to close your account within reasonable period of time - at least 30 days - and get full refund. Make sure your web host provides this option.

Now you know how to select the hosting package that won’t disappoint you.

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Choosing a good web host is not difficult. However, there are several important considerations that you must take into account in order to find the right web host.

1.) Disk Space

Disk Space is measured in bytes. 1 megabyte (MB) is roughly 1,000,000 bytes. 1 gigabyte (GB) is about 1000 MB.

It’s not difficult to calculate disk size needed for your web site. First, you must add all your files to find out how much space your site needs now. Then, you must consider future additions and updates to your web site.

Disk Space = Current Files + Future Additions

2.) Data Transfer, Bandwidth

Data Transfer measures how much data was transmitted from your site to the visitor and back.

If the web site consists of several pages for a total of 3MB, and there are 3,000 visitors a month who visit every page, then amount of data transferred is 3,000 * 3 = 9,000 MB. Since probably not every visitor will visit every page of your site, the best formula to calculate monthly data transfer is the following:

Data Transfer = # Of Visitors * Page Size * # Of Pages Viewed Of course, number of visitors and page viewes will differ from month to month, and so is amount of data transferred. Flash, video and music files usually account for most data tranmitted to and from your site.

3.) Operating System

Many web hosting services use Linux or Windows operating systems. Your choice of operating system should be based on what programs you plan to use.

Both Windows & Linux are fine for HTML files. However, Windows is best for ASP while Linux is fine with Perl/CGI. Take a look at what software and databases your prospective host is supporting.

Usually Windows hosting is more expensive. Some people wrongly believe that you must use the host that has the same operating system as your computer. Actually you can use Windows on your computer and have Linux host, and vice versa.

4.) Up Time

Up Time is a percentage of time your site is available online.

Sometimes even the very best web hosts shut down due to numerous reasons (outage, maintenance, human error…). However, your uptime must be at least 99% to 99.5%, and top web host provide it.

5.) Customer Support

It is very important to have professional help if something is wrong with your site. A good web host should offer at least a day time customer support and online support options.

6.) Price

Naturally you want to pay the lowest price possible for web hosting. However, sometimes cheap or free isn’t necessarily good.

You want to make sure that your host offers enough web space, data transfer and good customer support even if it means paying a little more. This is especially true for E-Commerce web sites. If your site is too slow to load or is down for some time, you lose customers and money.

I don’t recommend free hosts because they often place banners and other ads on your web pages. Many of them go out of business on a short notice or no notice at all. Also some free hosts won’t let you use your domain name and you will have to use their domain that can make your address too long and hard to remember.

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One of the ways that many web hosts fail to maximize the potential of their site is that they do not attract enough customers to it in the first place. You may have some of the best services and products around, but without potential customers visiting your site in the first place, how are you expected to sell? Therefore, getting sign ups is an extremely important part of web hosting, and with a little forethought and work, can be relatively easy. There are many ways to do this, but some of the best include:

Use a blog - although this may seem an unlikely way to get links and sign ups to your website, you’d be surprised. You could even make a dummy blog and sing the praises of your website or host, and that way interested or curious customers will start to visit.

Pay Per Click – this may be a little costly to start with, but in the long run the rewards far outshine the expense. Basically, Pay Per Click is where you pay a search engine like Google to make you a “featured” link on its front page, for instance. Then, when someone is looking for your product, your information is prominent. When an interested party clicks on your link, you pay Google a fee – for instance, ten cents per click. While this may seem like a lot, say you receive 100 visitors, at a cost of ten dollars, but you make a sale for double that. See how it makes sense?

Meta tags – this is one of the most under used yet important pieces of SEO that you can have. It’s no good having a site without advertising it properly. Keywords and Meta tags are a way to do this – when submitting your site to Google and the like, write a good introduction and article about your site that uses keywords. So, if your business is Jim’s Skate Boarding Store, write something along the lines of “For all your skate boarding needs, Jim’s Skate Boarding Store can fix you up with all the latest skates, boards and other…”. By mixing your business in this manner, you’ll be far more successful in being picked up by search engines.

Advertise – although this may be common sense, advertising is still one of the key ways to attract new business and visitors. Advertise your services in online magazines and ezines; that way you will attract the exact type of people you’re looking for.

Although there are a host of methods to enable you to increase your sign ups, each have their own plusses dependent on what your website offers, so look at who you wish to attract and this will make it easier to decide what way to proceed.

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With the web hosting industry having over thirty thousand providers all offering different services, it can often feel like picking your way through a minefield to try and decide which one is right for your needs. After all, what may be fine for you as a personal website user is unlikely to be the same for a company looking for a web host, and vice versa. To make sure you have a good web host for you, there are a few important points that you should be looking for:

Quality - one of the main reasons that people choose to leave their existing web hosts and move to another is the quality of service offered (or not, as the case may be). With so many companies striving to get your business, you can afford to look around and compare. Find out what their support infrastructure is like – do they have twenty-four hour customer service seven days a week? This is pretty much standard now and is the least you should expect. Check into the background and reputation of the web host too – this can be easily found in various online forums, and will give you an insight into how legitimate your potential web host is.

Reliability – how reliable the service and back up is should be the next thing you look at. It’s all very well paying less for one web host’s services than with a competitor, but how reliable is their network? Can it cope with extra pages and content being added? Will it freeze when transactions are being carried out? Will any updates and repairs to the network adversely affect your website while they’re being carried out? Unless you can be sure that you’re picking a reliable network with support both immediate and on going, the savings made will be useless. Again, check web reviews and forums on a particular web host to see how they compare to others.

Continuity – this can be looked at in two ways, and is extremely important in both. You want to be sure that your web host will still be around in a year, two years, ten years and so on, and again this is tied in with quality. If you’ve a lot of information that’s been built up over the years and you suddenly lose it or have to transfer it because your web host has gone out of business, this can be a major disaster. Similarly, if the web host needs to make changes to its infrastructure and implement new software, will this affect the design and functionality of your website, or will things continue as normal, just in a better manner? Check online again for how your web host is viewed by others.

Although it can be frustrating and take time to find the right web host for you, in the long run it won’t only save you money, but possibly something more important – time, investment and peace of mind.

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Changing web hosting plans is a chore for any website owner. As with many things that involve change, a lot of problems can end up making a tedious but necessary task an all-out nightmare.

1 – Don’t forget to BACKUP

Easily the most important step, making a backup of everything with your current web hosting company is crucial. Things can get lost, damaged or deleted accidentally during any web hosting move, whether you’ve got an account with the best enterprise web hosting solution or a budget, affordable web site hosting plan. Remember that if your site relies on a database, that needs to be backed up, too. Create two copies of your backup and store them in separate physical locations to minimise the risk of the backups being damaged.

The best way to backup is to manually copy all your files from your web hosting provider. Some hosts offer backup features, but these sometimes rely on specific technology that is not compatible with other web hosting companies. If you need to backup a database, you can create a simple PHP, ASP or Perl script (depending on your web hosting solution) to do the job.

2 – Tedium Extra

Once you’ve done your backups, you’ll be ready to make the switch. The checklist below will help you gather your thoughts:

(a) Find out your new web hosting provider’s DNS

(b) Check environmental factors such as PHP/MySQL versions, settings and other differences that may require changes to scripts
(c) Find out the temporary address to your new web hosting space so that you don’t have to wait for the URL to be transferred to see if it all works OK
(d) Some scripts may not work correctly after being directly transferred across, and so may require re-installation on the new servers. Ensure that you have copies of the installation instructions so that you can do this, if necessary.

3 – Let the world know

Good and courteous practice dictates that webmasters should inform their users of a web hosting change in good time. This allows users to prepare for (or at least not be surprised by) a sudden loss of operation. Particularly if you run an online shop, there’s a tendency for users to worry that you have disappeared with their money if they find they cannot access your site after they’ve paid for something and don’t know why.

Offering a temporary or alternative e-mail address is always a good idea, too, and keeping users up-to-date on the change process will help make the move smooth for them.

4 – The actual move

Schedule the actual switch between web hosting providers for a time that your hosting logs show is less busy. Perform one final backup for the latest, most up-to-date information, and then start copying files. You can help your users by uploading the parts of the site they use most, such as the main page. Getting error pages up there early is also a good idea, as it will allow you to inform visitors about the web hosting switch and apologise for problems.

If your website is really big, you may want to span the web hosting move over a few days. Prioritising sensibly by uploading the most important parts of your website first can really help make the whole transition much more seamless. Constantly check that pages and scripts are working by using the temporary URL to your web host.

5 – Press the big red button

Once you’re satisfied with everything, it’s time to change your DNS over to the new server. The process, once started, will take between 24 and 48 hours, so there’ll be a space of time during which you can tweak your site if you need to.

6 – Keep those eyes peeled; you’re not out of the woods yet!

Keeping your old web hosting account for at least a fortnight after you make the move is a really good idea. Check for server activity, e-mails and online contact systems (such as web form messages). Once you are satisfied that all of your users are being directed to the new web hosting provider, it’s safe to close the old account.

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