Monday, November 24th, 2008
Here are the three most critical questions to ask when you are shopping for a web hosting company. Support is the main one. Do they answer their email? Are they helpful? Do you get shuffled around?
Unlimited bandwidth and server space are not that critical. Don’t be swayed by those claims. Price and support. Again, I recommend Powweb. Click the button on the right to get more info about them.
The Shared Hosting Checklist | Web Hosting Articles & Tutorials – © Web Hosting Rating
Support
Customer service is a critical element of web hosting, especially if you are creating your first website. To make sure you get the benefit of quality support, you should find out if the company has a phone number, email address or live chat. You can take this one step further by making contact before signing up to judge their response time. If they take days to reply or blow you off completely, there is no need to waste your time.
Reviews
One way to find yourself a good shared host is to read reviews online. This should give you a good idea about who you will be dealing with and what to expect. At the same time, you shouldn’t rely solely on web hosting reviews. Some could be written by internal sources at a particular company while others could be written by competitors. If you want helpful reviews, try to get them from somebody you can trust to provide honest opinions.
Status
Every web host had to start somewhere, but it’s always a good idea to sign up with a company that has been in the business for a while. Several providers have crumbled despite seeming as if they were off to a good start. By doing business with trusted names with documentation to back up their claims, you can better assure that your experience with shared hosting will be a positive one.
Read the entire article at The Shared Hosting Checklist | Web Hosting Articles & Tutorials – © Web Hosting Rating
Posted in web host |
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
Here are the advantages of having a “managed web host”. They are in fact true and good reasons. If you require 100% uptime, hardware replaced within 30 minutes, the best support, and remote backups, then yes, you need managed web hosting.
If you want a Ferrari, then buy a Ferrari, but know that it's a Ferrari.
However, know that it comes at a cost. If you can handle having periodic issues so that you have 99.9% uptime instead, then normal web hosting is much cheaper. If you want a Ferrari, then buy a Ferrari, but know that it’s a Ferrari.
Advantages of Managed Web Hosting | What It Is
The reasons why to opt a managed web hosting account compare to unmanaged cheaper web hosting service are as follows:
No Downtime: Your online website works as official brand of your company presence over the internet thus it’s a must for you to make your site alive 24*7 hrs for the world wide web visitors so that they can access your website without any such issues like downtime. Major online web hosting providers gives you 99.9% uptime guarantee while the fact is this that its too insufficient to the practical need for better presence in front of your customers thus you need a web hosting company which can ensure you 100% optimal uptime as there are a lot of managed web hosting providers which offer 100% uptime in real due to their multi-home bandwidth network lines.
When you are a newbie webmaster even it’s a must for you to ensure that your web hosting provider gives you 100% uptime guarantee in this manner you can cut off a lot of hassles and frustration sort of unwanted things in your daily business role with your website.
Better Equipments: There are a lot of managed web hosting providers over the internet world which gives you 30 minutes or even 15 minutes hardware replacement guarantee sort of unmatchable performance for your website as when your hardware by chance goes failed this is a must as nobody knows what’s going on when as everybody just know either the past of the presence nothing can be predicated for future reference point of view when you are dealing practically over any such technical things as web servers.
Better Support: When you go to search any web hosting company you shall check their Support SLA things to let you know that how good they are to the support needs as there are a lot of managed web hosting providers which offer you maximum 30 minutes guaranteed response over your any trouble with your website so it’s always better to keep your eyes on their detailed SLA agreement too so you can secure yourself that you are working with the best supporting team for your web hosting needs.
Remote backups: Proper planning for backups shall be always carried when you host your website anywhere on internet and if you have a properly planned remote backup that makes you 200% more secure to what you are doing on internet.
Read the entire article at Advantages of Managed Web Hosting | What It Is
Posted in web host |
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
This is one of those questions that will get a complicated technical formula from the web development engineers, but it’s really not that hard.
If you have to ask, then you don’t need very much.
Don't be seduced by the flashing neon signs screaming *unlimited* at you.
If you are just starting out, you probably won’t have much traffic. Sorry, but it’s true. You can calculate the page files sizes and multiply by the page views you get a day or a month, but you won’t be able to do that without knowing how many people hit your site. If you have no history, then you can’t calculate, but it won’t be very much at all for a while.
Start out with the cheapest, least amount of space and bandwidth. Don’t be seduced by the flashing neon signs screaming “unlimited” at you. Don’t upgrade until you have to.
You will be surprised by just how little bandwidth you really need. If the average page is 100k, which is not unreasonable, then 100,000 pages a month is one gig. That’s over 3,000 page views a day. Do you have that many? If you have 10,000 views a day, then you’ll want 3 or 4 gig. I think “unlimited” bandwidth would probably cover that.
I really, really mean that you shouldn’t get more than you really need and you probably don’t need as much as you think you do. Really. Don’t do it.
Much more important is the reliability of the company. Do they answer emails quickly? Put in a support ticket and see how long it takes them to answer. Ask the sales people technical questions about redundancy and latency. See how long it takes to answer and does the answer make sense to you. Just tell them that you were told to ask about “redundancy and latency” and please explain what that means. If you are happy with the answer, then great. If you have no idea what this technical jargon they give you means or it takes them 3 days to answer you, then move along and find another web host company.
Posted in web host |
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
1. Shared – This is a server that is shared by multiple web sites. You get to put your web sites on there, along with everyone else.
This is a server that is shared by multiple web sites.
You share the hard drive space and you share the bandwidth. You have privacy. Everyone can only see their own files. Upside – these are the cheapest out there, maybe $5 to $30 a month. Downside – if someone else uses a lot of bandwidth or has CPU intensive scripts, then your site might be affected. You usually have less bandwidth on a shared server.
This is your own personal piece of hardware that you drive down to the hosting company
2. Collocated – This is your own personal piece of hardware that you drive down to the hosting company and they put it on their rack and plug it into their bandwidth. Upside – you can do anything you want and have complete control over the entire machine. All you are really paying for is the bandwidth. Downside – all you are paying for is the bandwidth. You have to back it up. You have to fix any problems. You have to manage the whole thing your self. If a hard drive fails, you have to buy a new one and replace it your self. You own the machine.
You get the entire machine, usually with more access to it than with a shared server.
3. Unmanaged Dedicated – This is their machine that you are renting from them. They give you file space and bandwidth. You get the entire machine, usually with more access to it than with a shared server. Upside – you get huge bandwidth and all of the CPU. You can run a lot of traffic through one of these. They can handle probably 500,000 page views a day. You want one of these if you have a huge site with a lot of traffic. Downside – they are expensive. They might be $200-$500 a month. You want a Ferrari, you pay for a Ferrari.
The hosting company will all monitor the server for you and fix things if they go wrong.
4. Managed Dedicated – These are the as Unmanaged Dedicated servers, except the hosting company will all monitor the server for you and fix things if they go wrong. If you have a large commercial site that MUST be up all the time, then you want one of these babies. Upside – these can handle anything, all the time. Downside – you guessed it, much more expensive.
If your site has little traffic, you won’t need the power of a dedicated server. If you are not a geek, then you probably don’t need to collocate your own server. If you are not running a huge commercial site, you probably don’t need a dedicated server.
I use these guys and they give me enough bandwidth and customer service to make me happy. I don’t promote anyone else, just Powweb.
Posted in web host |
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
WordPress is a system that allows you to manage your content. You might call it a content management system, or CMS, but only if you cared about this stuff. It’s a system built on a bunch of files that talk to a database. Sorry if that’s too technical for you. There are a bunch of people working on it, making it better. Because you, or someone who cares, can see what those files have in them, it’s called “open source”, where the “source” of the system, the files, is “open”.
Wordpress is a system that allows you to manage your content.
It’s possible to go to http://www.wordpress.org and download the whole bucket of files and install them on your own web server. If you were a programmer or a developer, you could change them and do whatever you wanted to with them.
So, if you spent all of your time to build this really cool new CMS thing, but you just give it away to everyone for free, how would you ever make any money from it? If you’re smart, you create a hosting company that lets people use it for themselves and then charges those people for add on special features. This means that you can get a free web site using WordPress for your very own small business. You’ve heard the phrase “The first one’s free”? It’s like that.
Posted in web site build |
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
There are a ton of web hosting companies out there. You will probably not get the traffic that requires some huge, bullet proof servers and bandwidth. You’ll be fine with a shared server and a lot of bandwidth.
Small business web hosting has become so easy and common that it’s a commodity these days. You want to look for price first, but the determining factor now are reliability, customer service and ease of use.
Reliability
When I first started to publish a fan site at survivor.com, I was getting a huge amount of traffic. I bought space at PowWeb, who I use now, and was fairly happy with them for the most part. They advertised “unlimited bandwidth”, so we were cool with the huge traffic spike every Thursday night.
Customer Service
That is, until it all stopped. One day, they decided that I had too many connections within a specific time, so they just turned it off. I had no site. I was furious. Of course, I found this out after I got home from work and their office was closed. I was screwed.
When I did contact them, they pointed out some fine print in that “unlimited bandwidth” section of the terms and conditions. They could shut me off any old time they wanted to with no warning. I was still furious.
Ease of Use
I shopped around and decided it was time to get a dedicated server with a specified amount of bandwidth. I was making good enough money to pay for it and it seemed like it was time to take the plunge. I had a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. I signed the year long contract and had the server set up. I found that the interface was horrible. I couldn’t manage the domain names the way I wanted to set them up. I didn’t have access to the MySQL settings. There were all sorts of little nuisances that I didn’t have with the shared server.
I was shocked at how hard it was to manage this thing. I couldn’t do half the things that I could with the shared server. I canceled the contract and asked for my money back. It took them 60 days to get that back to me.
I’m sure that there are better dedicated servers out there, just like there are worse shared servers. The key is to get in and play around with whatever you buy. Make sure that you can do what to do with it and that it’s easy. They have gotten much better today, so you shouldn’t have any problems, but you might.
After that fiasco, I went back to PowWeb, since I had paid for a year of their service. It seems that as soon as I decided that, they changed their terms of service and were promoting the amount of bandwidth they include. They no longer can decide arbitrarily, but they have a specified amount of bandwidth you can use. They tell you how much you’ve used and when you might run out.
I feel much better about being told that I have a “Monthly limit: 15400.00 GB” than it being “Unlimited”. That makes me a little nervous. (I just checked and they are advertising “Unlimited” again. Hmmmm…) Since I went back to them, they’ve given me absolutely no trouble at all. They’ve been 100% reliable. I’ve been able to do everything I need to. I’ve recommended them to clients who are also happy with them.
I would recommend PowWeb 100%.
There are other good, cheap hosts out there. I have nothing against any of them. Check them out. Make sure you can do what you want and that they give you a money back guarantee.
DO NOT DO ANY BUSINESS WITH NETWORK SOLUTIONS!.
Posted in web site build |
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
The Internet is a bunch of computers that all send little packets of data back and forth between each other. The computer that you are reading this on is one of them.
Each computer must have some sort of identifier so that it knows where to send the data to and so that other computer knows where to send it back to. These identifiers are called “IP Addresses”. IP stands for “Internet Protocol”. The address itself looks like this: 63.74.159.145. I’m sure you’ve seen something like that somewhere before.
But when you want a web page, you don’t tell your web browser to go get data from an IP address. You use a “domain name”, like “www.google.com” or “www.walton.com”. That domain name needs to be “resolved”. It’s got to be translated into an IP address so the data knows where to go. That all happens behind the scenes.
I’ll go through all the steps that happen so you’ll know what you need to do to get your own domain name set up without being taken advantage up by low life registrars. More about them later.
When you type in a domain name into your browser and hit enter, your computer goes and asks another server, called a “DNS” or “Domain Name Server” what the IP address is for that domain name. When your computer knows the IP address, it sends off the request and receives that answer back. In this case, the request is for a file that creates the web page in your browser.
Before I go farther, two terms you need to know are “client” and “server”. Each is a computer that can talk to other computers. The difference is that a “client” sends a request, while a “server” responds to requests. One asks and the other answers. Any computer can be either, or both, a client and a server.
Web pages are only one type of request, but probably the most common type. There are time servers that only respond with the time. There are Instant Message servers that sit between two people and send IMs to each of them as they are received. DNS responds to domain names with IP addresses.
So how does that DNS know what IP address is correct? From the “Root Servers”, of course! (No, they don’t serve roots.) There are 13 root servers that contain all of the information for each domain name that has been registered. Yes, they are pretty critical.
When a request for a domain name is received by a root server, it only knows which DNS to go ask for the IP address. DNS servers (Yes, the S is redundant, but who wants to call them “DN servers”?) are also called “name servers”.
Too many technical names? I think I got them all out so I can stop now.
The DNS are located all over. Anyone can have one. I have one here. Anyone can provide the service for you if you really wanted. Now, the DNS manages the relationship between the domain name and the IP address. Root servers know which DNS to ask and the DNS knows the IP. There are local DNS for each computer that needs to look up stuff. There are DNS that have authority over specific domain names.
The root servers get their information from “domain name registrars”. (That’s not really a technical name, so it doesn’t count.) You’ll hear people talking about their “registrar”. GoDaddy.com is one. Networksolutions.com is also one, but they are evil, so NEVER, EVER use them for anything. Did I mention that before?
A registrar will charge you some money per year to register your name. They usually provide a web interface so that you can manage what the name servers are for that domain name. They might provide the DNS for you and they’ll let you manage that too. The strength of that interface and what it will allow you to do is very important.
So, to review, you type in a domain name into your web browser. Your web browser asks the local DNS what the IP address is. If the local DNS doesn’t know, it asks the Root Server, which then tells it which DNS has authority for that name. Your local DNS then asks the DNS with authority, which then responds with the correct IP address. The web browser then sends off the web page request to the proper web server to get the web page.
All of that happens in the blink of an eye, which is a technical term for “under 200 milliseconds”.
Posted in DNS |
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
How to explain “URLs” so anybody can understand them – easyDNS Blog
One of our tech support guys just had a conversation with somebody who wanted “to register the URL http://example.com/something.html”, where example.com was already registered, the person couldn’t understand why he couldn’t have that URL with “something.html” after it.
We’ve heard variations of this one a lot. Like somebody who knows “xyz.zz” is taken “but can I register “www.xyz.zz?”, no, you can’t.
The easiest way to explain a URL such as this one: http://www.example.com/something.html
Is to think of it as HOW, then WHERE and finally WHAT:
| http:// |
« how? |
The method we are going to use to retrieve or “get to” the document described by the URL. Common ones are “http” (Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol), you may also see “ftp://” or “mailto:” |
| www.example.com |
« where? |
This is the hostname of the server, somewhere on the internet, which is holding the document we actually want |
| /something.html |
« what? |
Finally, after we know what server we are looking for and how we’re going to retrieve the document from it, we now specify exactly which document we want off of the remote server. |
Understand those three components and you basically have URLs down cold.
Your web browser (firefox, safari, IE, Opera) is all about “how”, what protocols to use to pull all these documents over the web to your desktop.
The web host is the “what” machine. It sits on a server and serves document after document to remote web browsers who send it requests.
Something has to bridge the browser to the web host/server and that’s the “where”, that’s where DNS and domains come in, and that’s primarily what we do here at easyDNS. We tell web browsers (and other client applications) the “where” aspect of retrieving and transmitting documents (the “whats”) across the internet. We do this via “DNS lookups” …about a quarter billion times a day.
Read the entire article at How to explain “URLs” so anybody can understand them – easyDNS Blog
Posted in web site build |
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
Using The Wrong Web Hosting Service Will Kill You | Gwizz IT by John Bear
Picking the right web hosting will be one of the most important decisions you will ever make with your online business. Why? Because the web server you choose will really make or break your online business.
It Could Kill You
Today I am going to discuss two types of servers; Virtual Web Hosting and Virtual Private Servers.
Lately, Virtual Web Hosting has been the only way to go when choosing a web server. One of the reasons that Virtual Web Hosting became so popular was because they supported the necessary files and allowed you to have more freedom than other conventional web hosting accounts. But now you can have more freedom than ever before with Virtual Private Servers. Moreover, Virtual Private Servers should not be confused with Virtual Hosts, because they are completely different types of accounts.
Before we go any further I’d like to explain what the difference is between a Virtual Host and a Virtual Private Server, so that you can really fully understand. In this article I will also go over the advantages and disadvantages of both types of servers, to help you decide which is right for you and your business. Let’s start off with Virtual Hosting.
Virtual Hosting
Virtual Hosting is also known as Shared Web Hosting, where you are sharing the physical server and a single set of software applications with other users. Virtual Hosting has been extremely popular in the past for its fast deployment, strong resources, and most importantly for having a very reasonable price. Another advantage to Virtual Hosting is that you have a powerful, reliable, and professionally managed server without having to have advanced technical skills, making it ideal for an individual, small business, or even a beginner.
Posted in web host |
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
Don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions. Use any other registrar. Not only do they charge you 4 times what most other registrars charge, moving your domain name to another registrar is almost impossible.
We had a client who had a name registered at Network Solutions. I showed them the difference in cost and customer support, so they wanted to move to GoDaddy.
La Brea tar Pits, Where You Get Sucked In And Never Get Out
First, they needed to submit a request. Then the request had to be approved. You have to actually call them to have the transfer approved. In this call, they try very hard to get you to stay. This isn’t a technical call or a call to protect you from someone stealing your name, it’s a sales call, a hard ball sales call.
When they finally do approve your request, it’s 5 days later, after multiple emails and a sales call.
Customer service is another issue, but this one is more subjective. They generally are not helpful and it takes twice as long to get things figured out with their support.
Bottom line, no matter what, don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions.
Posted in web site build |
