Web Hosting: Which Is The Host With The Most?

So you want to publish a web site do you? Welcome to the club. These days it seems that almost everyone has a web site of some kind, and thousands more continue to be launched every day. It's challenging enough to design a site and fill it with interesting content, but when all is said and done another challenge still remains - where to host it?

A popular choice for newbie webmasters, and even experienced ones, is to secure a free hosting plan with a company such as Yahoo! Geocities, Tripod or Angelfire. While these are easy to setup and free of charge, they do have limitations. Most free hosts don't offer all the nice features that paid hosts do such as FTP access, CGI-BIN, or your own personal domain name. Instead you're stuck with minimal features and a generic URL such as www.freewebhost.com/marcswebsite. This somewhat limits your web site‘s potential. Most free hosts also require you to run banners or pop-up ads on your web site to make it worth their while - these banners and pop-ups can obstruct the view of your web page and ultimately annoy visitors and drive them away. Lastly, most free hosts have a daily bandwidth limit that is very small, so if you do get a lot of traffic you'll most likely exceed the allotted bandwidth and your site will be temporarily disabled. Overall I would recommend free web hosts for people that are new to web hosting and want to get a feel for how it works. I'd also recommend them for web sites that are personal in nature (such as an online journal) as well as web sites that don't plan to generate any revenue. Free web hosts are a great stepping stone to paid web hosts - I myself starting building web sites 4 years ago using free hosts, and today I run several high traffic web sites that are hosted on paid web hosting plans.

Now it's time to get into the good stuff - paid web hosting. Web hosting companies that charge money for their services are plentiful on the Internet, and feature a wide array of hosting packages at various price points. First we begin with so called "budget" web hosts, who claim to offer you the world for only $1 per month. Having used numerous such companies I feel I must tell you to proceed with caution here, as these companies aren't all that they are cracked up to be. Many claim to offer 24/7 e-mail support, which in my experience turned out to be 0/0 e-mail support. My e-mails were either never answered or answered a week after I sent them. Even when I got a response it was generic in nature and completely unhelpful. Also, expect frequent outages with these budget web hosts as they rarely even have their own web servers - often they are reselling space on someone else's web servers over which they have no control. One budget web host I used went down unexpectedly for 6 days, and they didn‘t even bother to notify their customers. As a result, my web site was down for 6 days and I lost most of my visitors as well as my hard-earned search engine rankings. Lesson learned: if the reliability and success of your web site is important to you, budget web hosting might not be the answer. However, this is not to say that all budget web hosts are bad - 1dollarhosting.com is one of the leaders in the budget web hosting arena and has quite a good reputation.

The next type of paid web host is what I refer to as a "mid-range" web host, meaning that they offer prices and service that will satisfy the majority of web sites out there. Mid-range web hosts like PowWeb, Your-Site.com and iPowerWeb offer packages ranging from $5 to $8 per month and provide the tools that most webmasters will need to run a web site, such as: CGI-BIN, tons of e-mail addresses, FTP support, visitor statistics and more. These hosts do have monthly bandwidth limits, but the limits are quite high, and most web sites will never reach them. However, if your web site features hundreds of file downloads and gets decent traffic you may be shocked at how soon you'll reach those bandwidth limits. When you do, your site may be temporarily shut down or you'll have to pay bandwidth overage charges, which can get pricey. Overall though, mid-range web hosts will be satisfactory for 90% of the web sites out there, and generally offer excellent uptime/reliability. In fact, many web-based businesses are successfully run using a mid-range web host. However, as mentioned previously, web sites that offer large files for download or sites that get a huge amount of traffic may find that a mid-range host doesn't quite suit their needs. These types of web sites may require "high-end" web hosting solutions, the next topic in our discussion.

High-end web hosts typically service web sites that are extremely popular, have a high amount of traffic, and/or require pretty much 100% uptime. Most businesses rely on high-end web hosts to host their web sites. Rackspace.com is an example of a well known high-end web hosting company. Pricing for high-end hosts varies, but typically runs from about $50 per month to several hundred dollars per month. Many high-end hosts give you your own dedicated server (which they support) that is reserved just for you and your web site. The mid-range hosts I discussed earlier typically host many different web sites on the same server - this is known as "shared" hosting. High-end web hosts offer stellar reliability, bandwidth, and just about every tool you'll ever need to run a successful web site. Another feature that some high-end web hosts provide is "co-location" hosting. In this scenario, YOU configure and provide the web server, but you get to plug it into their data center/network. This can be very nice because their data center usually has a fiber-optic connection directly to the Internet, offering blazing bandwidth and stellar reliability. People who run web-based businesses or extremely popular, high traffic web sites are good candidates for high-end web hosting.

Hopefully this brief overview gives you a good picture of the various types of web hosts that exist, and which one might be right for you. When you begin your search for a web host, always keep in mind the old adage "You get what you pay for" because it really does hold true in this case. Before you make the commitment to host a web site be sure to take some time and analyze what you want out of the web site, and decide which factors are most important to its success. Answering these questions will get you many steps closer to choosing the web host that's right for you.

Web Hosting and Development

If you’ve ever browsed the World Wide Web and wondered how you could stake your claim on the Internet, like the millions of others that have done so already, then web hosting can provide you with the services to do just that. The Internet is a great way of sharing information and it is possible for you to take a portion of the web and make it your own. This article introduces the term “web hosting” and provides some useful tips for web development once you’ve obtained some web space.

What is the World Wide Web?
The “World Wide Web” is the network of computers from all over the world that communicate with each other using the HTTP protocol, a language that allows the transmission of web documents. Be careful as this term is not synonymous with the “Internet” because it is defined as a network of networks, where the computers communicate with protocols other than HTTP. The web is what you see on your Internet browser, the web pages complete with graphics, sound and other information. All this has got to come from somewhere, and this is where web hosting comes in.

Web Hosting
The information that you see from your web browser is contained in web pages. These web pages are kept on computers called web servers. Web hosting is about the storage of the web pages so that people can access them. It is possible to host your own websites yourself but the reasons stopping most people doing this is that there are issues to consider with having the right hardware and software to successfully host your web pages. Your web pages will take a certain amount of space, users will need to download each page to view them and your Internet connection needs to be fast to offer good performance to your viewers. Using specialised companies that offer web hosting capabilities on their web servers will take most of these worries away from you but you will need to choose wisely and weigh up the costs and your needs. In addition to having access to a web server, you will also need to register a domain name (for a cost) that uniquely identifies your website.

What Web Hosting Can Do For You
The most basic service that web hosting offers is that it exposes your web pages for others to see. The other services are: email capabilities that allow for email to be received and sent from your server; database capabilities that allow for large amounts of information to be updated and accessed on the web; and dynamic content which allows for users to interact with the web pages you’ve made.

Website Development
Poorly designed websites will most likely turn away users and harm the credibility of the information it contains. Thought should be put in on the way it looks and the way you intend your users to interact with the content. It is also recommended for more complex websites, a structured development process should be followed. Here is a guide to the logical steps of web development:
· Requirements Analysis: What is the purpose of the website? What content should it contain?
· Design: How should the pages be linked? What structure should they take? How should the pages interact with the user?
· Implementation: This step is the actual coding of the websites in accordance to the previous websites.
· Testing: Does the website do what it should?
· Maintenance: Is the information on the website up-to-date?

Some useful hints for web development below are taken from software quality aspects but they apply to the development of websites as well. They are described in terms of web development:

Reliability: Is the website reliable? Do faults allow for the system to continue running?
Robustness: How does the website respond to incorrect input?
Performance: How fast does the web page respond to user’s actions? Is it efficient in processing requests and inputs?
Usability: Is the website easy to navigate and understand?
Maintainability: Is the website easy to change? Can new functionality be added?
Portability: What software requirements does the website require? Will this limit the amount of potential users?
Understandability: How well do you understand the website you’ve developed?

When designing your website, keep these quality aspects in mind as they will help you develop pages worth visiting. How to choose the way to host your website is half of the problem, the other half is to create a website that people would want to visit and come back to. Knowledge of producing a good design can help you get the most out of your creations.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) - How to use it to Fight Email Forgery

Spam is a real problem today. Forged email is a big part of the spam problem. Have you ever received a spam email from yourself? How many times have you received an email you know to be spam from someone only to find out it came from an invalid email address? When you try to block the email by choosing block sender, the spammer simply changes the email address to another variation and gets through the block. Until recently, there wasn't much you could do about it. Now there is.

What is Sender Policy Framework (SPF)?

SPF makes it easy for a domain, whether it's an ISP, a business, or a school to say that they only send mail from certain machines. If any other machine is claiming to send mail, they are lying. SPF aims to prevent spammers from ruining other people's reputation. When your machine receives an email from another server that has implemented SPF, your machine can easily tell if the incoming email really comes from the server it says it belongs to. More information about SPF can be found at http://spf.pobox.com/

By implementing SPF in your favorite application or on your server, you can be sure that a spammer will never be able to impersonate you when spamming others. Most well known domains and email applications have already implemented SPF on their servers and products. Some examples of vendors that are already implementing SPF into their products include Sophos, Symantec, Declude Junkmail, Brightmail, IronPort, Ciphertrust, MailArmory, MailFrontier, Roaring Penguin Software, Communigate Pro, and others.

Ready to fight email forgery? Install applications that support SPF today and get protected from email forgery!

Choosing Your Web Hosting Package

General rule of thumb is not to sign up for yearly web hosting plans. Instead, get monthly plan where you can unsubscribe from on the second month when you are not happy with the service. That is, if you ended up with an unreliable web hosting company in the first place.

Here is a simple guide that can be easily applied to typical web sites:

--Web Space--

Expect a small website to take up 10 and 100 MB. Considering that you may want to expand your website in the near future, it is advisable to get a web hosting plan with ample web space.

Make sure that you know your needs before you start looking for your web host. Not every web hosting plan can be upgraded or customised. More than often, webmasters do not get the features they need and are not able to customise their web hosting features.

--Monthly Traffic--

Data transfer per month are typically referred to as bandwidth. It is the amount of data transfer that occurs between your website and visitors. A small or medium web site will consume between 1 and 5GB of data transfer per month. Larger, commercial or popular websites often consume more than 5GB of monthly data transfer and sometimes, exceeding 100GB of monthly data transfer.

Before you decide on a web hosting plan, be sure to check this:

- What is the monthly data transfer/ bandwidth allowed?

- Will you be charged if your website exceeds its limit?

- Are you able to upgrade/add on your bandwidth?

--Connection Speed--

Visitors to your web site will often connect via 56K modems or ADSL modems but your web host provider should have a much faster connection. Your website should have high web site connections that are approximately 1000 high speed (56 Kilobytes per second) modems combined- T3 fiber optic connections.

In the early days of the Internet, T1- connections was considered a fast connection. The fastest connections available are T3 connections that are used by Internet Service Providers and major corps.

Finding a Home for Your Internet Enterprise - A Point by Point List

After much Net surfing and looking at all the offers you've
decided to take the plunge! You've investigated a good name
for your idea. You've decided it's time to start searching for
a home for your Internet vision. By golly, it's time to start
your own enterprise! You're tired of all the reading and
research! You're ready to go mano-a-mano!

But,there are a million and one providers available!
How do you choose? What should a first time entrepreneur
get? Thankfully, there is a way to come upon a good choice!
Read on and I'll explain what you should examine when making
your selection.

The main thing to consider is what kind and how many
different services are you going to need. What do you think
are the most basic things you want your website to do?
Those are practical considerations since you don't want to
leave out some essential service; all the same, you don't
want to buy more than what you really have to.

The general trend appears to be in favor of providers that
offer many integrated services (built-in); it makes perfect
sense getting all the services you'll need from one
location.
As an added bonus, it does make administration easier since
you don't have separate accounts to deal with. You'll also
save money because the packages are less expensive than
buying extra services piecemeal.

You do have to be careful when choosing packages because you
could pay a high price for things your startup can't use or
won't need!
The trick is to get all that you need and provide a little
room for future expansion. When it comes to this buying
decision, pricing - though always important - should be your
last consideration.

Services, room for growth and price are the basic elements
of your purchase decision. Let's take a look at each one:

Services:

You don't want to skimp on this one! Think about all that
you'll need and get it. Mainly, you'll need a way to bill
your customers, track their interests and stay in touch with
them.

You have to make sure your provider offers all the
services you're going to need to process Credit Cards and
email. In particular, services related to initial customer
contact and follow up with sequential emails. Another item
to consider is the ability to track your visitors and learn
what their interests are!

You should look to get as many integrated services as you can.
That's so important because it's VERY expensive to order them
after the fact.

Room for Growth:

If you think you'll ever branch out, this is something to
consider: Will you be able to create additional Internet
addresses linked to your main account, at no extra cost?
Some providers allow you to take advantage of that feature;
a point well worth considering for future expansion.

Pricing:

When considering how much to spend, you have to take into
account all of the above plus your financial situation.
Only you know how much you can afford to pay.

Extra Considerations

Since only you know what kind of enterprise is going to
anchor your initial Internet adventure, you should consider
all aspects related to it. As an example, if you're going to
offer sound and streaming video to your customers, your
needs should be met by a provider that has all the specific
requirements needed for those services.

Hosting AND a source of Income

There are some providers that will offer you discounts or
financial incentives to bring in subscribers. A point to
consider because you get two birds with one stone: A home
for your enterprise and a way to make a steady monthly
income from your referrals. I've heard some folks are making
a very good living doing that!

Hunting for a place to host your Internet venture is a big
decision that will affect your entire Web operation.
You should take your time and consider all the angles.
It's something so basic! Making the right choices will make
your first Internet presence a streamlined and productive
affair.

Effectiveness of Web Hosting Directories (WHDs)

John is very happy today, for the first time in his life he has created his very own website. Now he is looking for a web host so that he can put his identity on the net. Casually he asks his friend Mac about it. Mac tells him that web-hosting directories are the best place to look for a web host. Getting curious John then asks Mac what exactly a Web Hosting Directory is. Mac responds that web hosting directories are a web hosting marketplace where prospective hosts list their products, plans, prices and other important information so that according to their requirements, customers can choose a suitable plan. Along with the details, it also contains web hosts’ rankings. John is now extremely happy as his dream is finally going to come to fruition. Like John, there are many beginners who are in search of a reliable web host and come across web hosting directories. Here a new question arises: Are these web hosting directories really trustworthy sources for novices like John? To find an answer it’s very important to understand the working of WHDs.

Basically web-hosting directories are of two types: paid WHDs and free WHDs. For paid directories, either web hosts pay a set amount for placing their banners on the site, or they pay commission if they get customers via that medium. On the other hand, free WHDs like www.askwebhosting.com and www.hostbyte.com etc. web hosts list their services without paying any fees.

Some people believe that paid WHDs are very easy to manipulate as the ranking of web hosts can be changed in unfair ways. Others have the view that WHDs that are actually free reflect the true ranking of web hosts companies. Whatever the case may be, paid or free, people should believe the web hosts rankings only if they are based completely on votes of customers who have actually given their remarks and have left their website address as well.

It is not possible for any web hosting company to have 100% positive reviews. It is also observed that at times customers who are satisfied with their web host forget to express their opinion about that host. However, a biased customer who is not satisfied with their web host does not forget to mention their opinion of that web host. This implies that a negative review doesn’t always reflect the true picture of a web host company.

No doubt web hosting directories are very useful if the newbie like John wants to compare prices and features of different companies. But, when it comes to choosing a web host he/she should make an intelligent choice by referring to other resource sites (forums etc.) as well.

Setting up Your Personal Server

There are many things to consider when setting up your own server. We wouln't encourage a novice for the job. Seek help from web professionals if you have any queries. Here are some web hosting factors to consider when setting up your personal server:

- A server license is needed and they are not cheap

- Virus, bugs and spam attacks

- 24-hour maintenance and support

Your website doesn't sleep but you do need your sleep! Who is going to take care of your website that is hosted in your personal computer while you are sleeping? Getting 24 hour up- time and support is necessary for your website; especially if it is a business website! The main advantage Internet Service Providers have over personal servers is: having web professional maintenance crew working 24/7 to ensure that web hosting is running smooth for websites.

Many people will think setting up server hosting is cheaper than getting a web hosting package. Buying hosting equipment is not cheap for an individual and just like any other computer equipment, it becomes outdated after a while. Server companies spend hundreds of thousands on equipment and keeping up with technology. They buy in bulk, hence having bulk savings. Hence, web hosting packages are competitive and affordable.

If you are genuinely interested in setting up your own server, do it out of interest's sake. Otherwise, you will be financially better off getting hosting packages off bulk- buying server companies.

Don't Get Fooled by the Web Hosting Wolves in Sheep's Clothing!

Are you looking for web hosting? If you want to set up a personal website, or a modest commercial one, you are probably in the market for an inexpensive shared hosting plan. Those entry-level plans may cost $5-10 per month, and often boast very generous features for that modest prize. However, the strong competition often causes the companies to oversell, and then have difficulties living up to their promises. And how do you go about telling the good ones from the bad?

Maybe you go to one of the many web hosting review sites. Those places may offer extensive listings of various web hosting companies and their features; which is certainly helpful. But be aware of the fact that these review sites are out there to make money by referring new customers to the hosting companies! Therefore, they tend to praise those companies that pay them the best.

I used to be naive about these things, trusting the review sites. That was until I began some serious research on the subject myself. Were they really so good, those much-praised web hosting companies? Soon, I was able to uncover large amounts of customer testimonials that told a different story.

It became clear that several very large and well-known web hosting companies had surprising amounts of negative customer ratings against them. There were many angry customers that related stories about incompetent or non-existent customer support, billing disputes where the company kept charging ex-customers after they had cancelled their accounts; and more.

One may say that any company with many customers is likely to have a few that are hard to please. But in these cases, there were scores of reviews, and the majority was negative! Since there are also cases where hosting companies have tried to prosecute those who have criticized them in public, I will not mention any names here.

In conclusion: I advice anyone looking for a reliable and honest web hosting provider to be very careful and not put too much trust in the web hosting ratings commonly found at hosting review sites and similar places. Also be aware that the customer feedback published by the web hosts themselves on their sites is of course filtered - and may even be faked.

Web Hosting --- Finding the Niche and Cashing in!

Web Hosting --- Finding the Niche and Cashing in!

Over this past year, web hosting has grown to be the biggest it has ever been. With more companies appearing every day, the demand for web hosting has never been higher.

In 2005, web hosting will be even bigger.

It has been estimated that 38 million people will put their very first websites online in this next year. And, by 2008, the internet sales industry will top the 120 billion dollar mark.

What does this mean for you?

Finding the right web host for your application will be easier. Quality web hosting companies will separate themselves from the rest of the industry, and unprofessional web hosting companies will suffer. Support will become the number one factor for people when choosing a web host. Traditional advertising will become less and less effective, as most people will choose a web host based on colleague’s recommendations.

This is going to create a great opportunity for web hosting affiliates, and resellers. By simply referring people to hosting services, many people will be able to make full time income. They are doing it right now.

Think about it. Everyone who wants a web site needs a web hosting company to host it for them. Currently, there is no definitive hosting industry leader, and most people choose hosts based on recommendations.

If you are happy with your web host, check to see if they operate an affiliate program. Instead of paying them every month, or year, imagine them paying you? It can be as easy as putting a small “powered by” or “hosted by” link on the bottom of your page.

Why pay for web hosting if you don’t have to? Why not get paid to let people know you like your web host.

Remember when choosing a web host; choose one that has fantastic customer support. Look for hosting affiliate programs, or even RESIDUAL affiliate programs, which are programs that pay you a percentage every month for a client you refer, and allow you to build a steady income.