Thursday, November 20th, 2008
Don't be seduced by the flashing neon signs screaming *unlimited* at you.
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.
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.
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Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
This is a server that is shared by multiple web sites.
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. 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.
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Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
Wordpress is a system that allows you to manage your content.
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”.
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.
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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!.
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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”.
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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
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Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
Using The Wrong Web Hosting Service Will Kill You | Gwizz IT by John Bear
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.
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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.
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Saturday, August 2nd, 2008
I started working for a large corporation in 1986, where I learned how to use a dumb terminal on a main frame computer. The computer was in one of those air conditioned rooms that you see in the movies. When personal computers came along, my mind was blown. I bought a 28.8 modem and hooked up to a BBS, a bulletin board system, in about 1989.
The Internet was just a myth to us back then, a place for academics and government workers. My wife bought an “Internet Starter Kit” for Christmas in 1992. I sent me first email that day and my life was changed forever. I soon learned about FTP and Gopher and MOOs. When the web came along in about 1993, I learned HTML. My first web host gave us 200k of space on the server. Yes, that’s “k”, not “MB”. I serve images bigger than that now.
I put my own web server on line on June 24, 1994 and it’s been on line ever since, except for that time that the hard drive quit while I was out of town for a week, but that’s another story. I’ve been designing, building, and hosting web sites ever since.
I got a “day job” as a web developer for Vivendi Universal Games, a video game company in 1998. We built promotional sites for the games we sold. I learned about marketing from that job. They hired developers that we a lot better than I was, but I turned out to be better at project management. I’ve been a project manager ever since, working with technical people, creative people and managers. I learned what it took and how to make things happen on the web.
When Vivendi laid off 40% of the company in one day, including all of my department, I started to work for Intermix, the company that created MySpace and sold it to FOX. I worked on other sites for them, including some pretty spammy, sleazy sites, I’m sorry about that. I learned how to work with an online community, with email lists, and the finer points of advertising. I learned the right way and the wrong way to do things.
I worked for FOX for a while, before they started to reorganize everything and all of the people I worked with left for greener pastures. I went to work for ePublishing, who does high end (read: “unneccesarily expensive”) sites for publishing companies. The clients are people who had old school print news companies and were desperately trying to make the switch to online. I learned how to deal with difficult clients and unreasonable decisions. We cranked out some great sites in spite of it all.
In the meantime, back when I was starting out in 1994, I built a site for a friend who owned a company so that I could say that I had built a companies web site. I got the domain name “survivor.com” for that site. When the TV show hit in 2000, my poor little servers didn’t stand a chance under all of the traffic. I learned about buying web hosting.
When I learned about SEO and AdSense, about 4 or 5 years ago, I started to optimize the site. It was on the third or fourth page for search results and I was making about $1200 a month. All that traffic was from people typing in “survivor.com”, thinking that was the official site.
I actually bought an eBook about “making your millions on line with AdSense”. It cost $75. I was afraid to buy it, but after I read it, I started started doing the things in the book, trying various changes to improve the search results ranking as well as the click through rates. I soon got on the first page of the search results and I started making $2500 a month. After the first year of working on it, I was making $3500+ a month. Interest in the show has since waned, but I made $35,000 in one year, all from AdSense at a dime or so a click .
Now, I write about how to put your small business on the web, and market it effectively for free or really cheap. By “small business”, I mean five people or less. Car repair shops, restaurants, contractors, wedding flowers, or real estate agents.
While I can do everything it takes to get your site on line, I’m best at coaching you on how to get it done yourself. I want to give you the knowledge and power to get the best deal on the most effective web site that you possibly can. I know the tricks and the tips on how to get it the way you want and get it for not very much money. You can hire me or read my site. I’ll be here for you. Thanks for spending your time here.
-conrad walton
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