Elements of Web Hosting

When you first start out trying to get a site on the Internet everything seems so confusing. Obtuse acronyms flow freely through the 'Beginner Friendly' information sites and definitions can be hard to come across. The main reason for this is that the Internet and the process of getting a website online is really very simple, and once people get past the first stumbling steps they rarely remember the difficulty they once had, which leads to them being unable to understand the next wave of dot com newbies.

So let's begin with defining some of the basic terms that are commonly thrown around when looking for a web host. You'll quickly realize that computer geeks like using big words for simple concepts. What do you expect from a group of people that decided to call half a Byte a Nibble?

Web Host: These are the people that supply your website with somewhere to sit and be accessed from. They're often a wealth of information, so when you're trying to find your feet it will often be worthwhile to contact their tech support and get your questions answered. Because of this, it's important to contact them BEFORE you sign up for any packages to ensure that you'll receive a timely response. Just fire an email their way and see what happens.

Disk Space: This is the same as the space on your own PC's hard drive. Web Hosts will allocate a certain amount of space to your website, usually in Megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB). This determines how much you can store on your site.

Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be retrieved from your site within the bandwidth period. The bandwidth period is the length of time before your bandwidth gets reset once again, usually about a month. Bandwidth is measured in MB and GB, like disk space. Always find out the consequences of exceeding your allocated bandwidth before you purchase a hosting package.

Domain Name: The domain name is your personal identifier on the Internet. This is what gets typed into a web browser's address bar to reach your site. Some hosting companies will offer a domain for free, while others will have the facilities to provide one for a minimal cost.

SQL (MySQL, SQL Server etc.): Structured Query Language. This is the language used to interact with databases. Chances are that if you don't know about it when you start looking for web hosting, you're not going to need to know about it for at least a little while longer.HTTP: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. Basically, how the Internet works. It is the protocol governing the transfer of web pages from one place to another.

HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language. This is (usually) what you'll be using to make your website, whether directly or indirectly. Don't be scared by the name, the 'language' is very easy to learn.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol. This is a method for sending pages and files from your home PC to a server. It is quite simple to use and your host will provide login information if this is the method that they use for file access. Typing "FTP://" into My Computer on a windows box allows you to use FTP as if your server were a regular windows folder.POP3: This is a common email 'post box' system. It is use to store emails for retrieval.

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. A common protocol used to send emails.The beginner will not really need to know too much about the above two email technologies. If they're listed, good. It means you have email accounts with your website (i.e. the email name@yourdomain.com will reach you, somehow)

There are many 'languages' used to enhance websites, such as Java, Perl, ASP, .NET, PHP, etc. If you're just starting out you should try to learn simple HTML first before you worry too much about these more advanced languages. In general they're not too difficult to learn, but you'll want a solid grounding before you tackle them.

The Internet is a wonderful source of knowledge, so whenever you want information just fire up your favourite search engine and type in your problem. The Internet is full of sites about the Internet, so the information you want shouldn't be too hard to find.

Building professional websites takes a lot of time and skill, so many companies hire people to do it for them. If this is the situation that you're in, talk to the designer you're hiring about hosting, as they may have struck a deal with a webhost to provide clients with cheaper hosting packages. Also, the professional designer will know what features you're going to need in a hosting plan.

The world of web hosting is not as complicated as people would like to make out. Just make sure you do a little bit of research before diving in and you'll be less likely to get burned by a shifty 'here today, gone tomorrow' company. Check out the host's rankings on a few Web Hosting Directories, do a search for reviews of the company, contact the support staff before signing up and enjoy the world opened by having your own online presence.

LOOKING FOR A NEW WEBHOST

The first step in locating the best and most affordable web hosting company for your needs is to hit your favorite search engine and then to start collecting email addresses of hosting firms. Take a quick look around at what each company offers to determine possible suitability. If their web site doesn't function correctly, it's wise to look elsewhere. Ensure you review their company profile to get a "vibe" about their practices and ethics. If the company profile only details how good they think they are, run like hell. The rest of your initial enquiries can be handled via email. Let the hosting services know that you are approaching a number of companies. You can make this clear by putting all the company email addresses in the CC field. This strategy will quickly identify the companies who genuinely want your business and also allow you to easily run through an initial cull, saving you valuable hours in research. Not all web hosts are created equal The criteria for the first cull is simple - if they don't respond to your enquiry within 24 hours, delete them from your "possibles" list. This also applies if they only send you links to promo material without any personalized message.

To really test them out, send your email late on a Saturday night - wherever the hosting company is in the world, it will be the weekend. The idea behind the 24 hour strategy is this - if a company can't respond to pre-sales questions quickly, it may be an indication of what their customer support is like. Also, many web site hosts don't see the "big picture". You may be starting out small, but who knows how big you'll become and how many other people you will refer to their service? A forward thinking company recognizes this and communicates appropriately. Don't make it too hard on the hosting companies in your email to start off with, you can ask more detailed questions as you reduce the list of possibilities. . Hosting Service Recommendation: uses a excellent email support service that makes telephone support look positively antiquated. Test it out for yourself and ask them some pre-sales questions! Visit ThinkHost today! Looking for a new web host? The first step in locating the best and most affordable web hosting company for your needs is to hit your favorite search engine and then to start collecting email addresses of hosting firms. Take a quick look around at what each company offers to determine possible suitability. If their web site doesn't function correctly, it's wise to look elsewhere. Ensure you review their company profile to get a "vibe" about their practices and ethics. If the company profile only details how good they think they are, run like hell. The rest of your initial enquiries can be handled via email. Let the hosting services know that you are approaching a number of companies. You can make this clear by putting all the company email addresses in the CC field.

This strategy will quickly identify the companies who genuinely want your business and also allow you to easily run through an initial cull, saving you valuable hours in research. Not all web hosts are created equal The criteria for the first cull is simple - if they don't respond to your enquiry within 24 hours, delete them from your "possibles" list. This also applies if they only send you links to promo material without any personalized message. To really test them out, send your email late on a Saturday night - wherever the hosting company is in the world, it will be the weekend. The idea behind the 24 hour strategy is this - if a company can't respond to pre-sales questions quickly, it may be an indication of what their customer support is like. Also, many web site hosts don't see the "big picture".

You may be starting out small, but who knows how big you'll become and how many other people you will refer to their service? A forward thinking company recognizes this and communicates appropriately. Don't make it too hard on the hosting companies in your email to start off with, you can ask more detailed questions as you reduce the list of possibilities. . Hosting Service Recommendation: ThinkHost uses a excellent email support service that makes telephone support look positively antiquated. Test it out for yourself and ask them some pre-sales questions! Visit ThinkHost today! http://www.thinkhost.com/index.php?11137

In search of a webhosting company

In search of a webhosting company for personal or small business purposes? We advise you to take a look at this article to understand the hosting industry and study its dynamics to know what to look for before you make your choice.

First, a brief introduction to the webhosting chain: the end consumer is served by about 3 upstream providers: the webhosting provider that they have direct contact with, the webhost's upstream company who maintains the servers and sells space to webhosts, and above that, the
datacenter that provides the connection and houses the servers. Some webhosts are also the server admins and liase with the datacenters directly.

The webhosting industry has been claimed to be near saturation point as there are hundreds of web-hosting providers clamouring to provide cheaper and better services to businesses and individuals. This upsurge of supply is largely due to resources becoming readily available (and at cheaper costs) with plunging diskspace and data-transfer prices. The barriers to entry in the web-hosting space is low as large resellers of server space provide cheap hosting and reselling plans that create opportunites for new webhosts to join in the market. With increasing
number of suppliers with ever cheaper reselling plans, more webhosting businesses are sprouting up to provide web-hosting solutions to business and individual websites due to lower fixed costs and investment. In addition, this increase in supply is not caused by factors in any
particular country. The internet is global and as such, datacenters in US, or in fact, any part of the world, can provide the server and webspace for a local webhosting company. It is taking place in internet space and consumers and providers can easily find each other and exchange services in the global space.

Increasing the supply is naturally a good thing for the customer who is on the demand side. This inbalance has caused new web-hosting providers to offer extremely low prices for their webhosting plans or packages in order to compete in the tough market. Customers get to
choose from a myriad of hosting providers who are constantly lowering their prices. However, this might not be a good thing. By offering low prices, companies are earning small margins that may not cover their support costs. Support is vital in the webhosting business as most
customers want to be able to get help with their web-hosting accounts. If the profits do not justify the costs, web hosting companies will easily close down - and take their clients' sites with them.

So what are the factors to look at when choosing a host for your website?

Support is the single most important factor for any individual or small business looking for a webhost for their websites. Any internet web hosting provider that does not respond to emails for at most 24 hours is probably having problems providing fast and reliable support
services. These services are essential to customer satisfaction and especially for customers who are new to webhosting will need guidance with publishing their websites on the webhosting account provided. The webhosting business is about relationships between webhost and
webhosting customers. You should want to know that you can get help when you need, and want to be informed when your website is going to be offline for maintainance.

Stability comes in second as a factor when choosing a webhost.
Stability refers to how much uptime you can expect from the webhosting provider. This actually depends on the providers' servers and network. If they do not have reliable and stable providers, it would affect their servers and cause problems for your website. An uptime of about 99.5% is considered reliable in the industry as there are external factors which may be beyond control of the provider. External agencies like Alerta.com provide server monitoring services that webhosting companies might use to proof their reliability.

Cost is a factor depending on the purpose of the website and budget.
Personal /Individual websites might have smaller budget and choose to go with a cheaper webhosting provider, possibily in exchange for support and stability. Business sites might have larger budgets and should definitely place stability and support above all else. The cheaper
webhosting deals that offer enormous diskspace and huge amounts of data-transfer at a dollar rates has continuously proven to be a one-off hit that attracts customers in numbers, but fail in providing quality support. Large numbers of client sites also cause sustained high server
loads that might cause the server to crash and thus affecting stability.

Location of the server is generally not an important issue depending on your ISP/country's connection to the datacenter where the server is located. Pings to the server can normally tell you the network latency to expect when people from your area access your site. Lower ping rates means that your site will load faster.

Lastly, take time to identify and contact a webhost to ask about their service. This would give you an idea of the kind of support that you might receive and help you in deciding if you want to go with the web-hosting provider.

Find the Best Web Host for Your Needs

Due to the numerous types of Web Hosting companies that exist today, choosing the right one can sometimes be a difficult task. This article is intented to make the process a little easier for you.

The first thing you need to decide is what type of Web Site you want. For example, will it be personal or business related? Will you need ecommerce services such as a shopping cart and a merchant account? Do you have any special requirements such as the ability to run CGI scripts? Do you want your own domain name? How much can you afford to pay? The cost of Web Hosting varies widely, from free to thousands of dollars per month. However, you will find that a typical Hosting account ranges from $10 to $50 per month, depending on the features available. These are just some of the questions that you should evaluate before searching for a Web Host.

Will you need a domain?
If your goal is to build an online business, then it makes sense to get yourself a domain name. The cost is $30 per years and you can register through Register.com. At each of these sites, you will be able to search the Whois database to see if your chosen domain is available. If you find the domain registration procedure intimidating, many Web Hosts will register a domain for you much more cheaply. For example at Avahost.net and ePowhost.com you can register domain for only $9.95, or you will get it for free if you will pay yearly for web hosting service.

How much disk space will you need?
Although it is sometimes difficult to determine how large your Web Site will be, it is a good idea to have a rough estimate. This will allow you decide what Web Hosting account is right for you. As a rule, you can fit about 30 Web pages into 1 MB of disk space. This includes text and one or two images (at approximately 33K per page). Using this as a guide, you should estimate how large your site will be and choose an appropriate Web Hosting plan. You should also be sure to have enough room for future Web Site growth. Be sure to ask any potential Web Host about their upgrade policies in case you outgrow your current disk space limit.

How much Web Site traffic to you expect?
One of the most important considerations you should make is how much traffic you expect to receive. For most Web Sites traffic is not an issue but some receive thousands of visitors per day and this puts a heavy strain on the web server. The method that Web Hosts use to determine how much traffic your site receives is called data transfer. This is not exactly the same as traffic but the more traffic you get, the more data transfer you use. Using the above 33K per page example, 2000 MB of data transfer is roughly equivelent to 60,000 page views. Most Web Hosting accounts allow you to use 1000-4000 MB of data transfer or 30,000 to 120,000 page views per month. You should use this as a guide to determine whether or not you will exceed your data transfer limit. Obviously if you are creating a new Web Site it is difficult to determine how much traffic you will receive but if you have an exosting Web Site, you should have a rough estimate.

Do you need access to ecommerce solutions?
If you are going to be selling products or services over the Internet, chances are that you will need some type of ecommerce solution. By this I am referring to features such as a shopping cart, secure server access and a merchant account if you want to process credit card payment. The shopping cart may only be needed if you plan on having a catalog of products available for sale. This makes shopping much easier on any potential customers. If you plan on accepting credit cards, you will also need a merchant account. This is a basically an account that allows you to process credit card payments from your customers and have the money deposited into your bank account. There are many merchant services available on the Internet, some much better than others. Merchant fees range in price from $25 to $75 per month with setup fees usually in the $100 to $800 range. RodopiPaymentGateway.com seems to be the low cost leader at only $20 per month. Be sure to research companies before making a committment. I recommend you billing service 2CheckOut

Customer Support
One of the biggest complaints that many people have with their Web Host is a lack of customer support. Many Web Hosts offer both email and phone support while others are available only via email. In most cases email support works fine but you should be wary if a potential Web Host has no telephone number available in case of an emergency or if you need to speak with someone directly. Response times to support questions can vary widely from Host to Host. Some may take only a few minutes to get back to you while others take days. It is important to find out what type of support any potential Web Host offers. One good way to do this is to contact them several times and see how quickly they get back to you. However, be aware that some Hosts respond very quickly to sales questions but once they have you as a customer, support response times may drop dramatically. Also note that customer support may not always be available. Some Web Hosts offer support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, while others have set hours.

What account features will you need?
Web Hosting accounts vary widely with regards to the types of features included. Be sure to come up with a list of features that you will want. These may include email accounts, email forwarding, CGI scripts, MS FrontPage support, mailing lists, Web statistics, etc. There are many features available to potential Web Site owners, if you have specific needs, be sure to ask if they are available.

Ask about billing and cancelation policies.
Many Web Hosts allow you to pay on a monthly basis, others require a 3, 6 or 12 month commitment. Before signing up for any service, be certain to ask about specific billing policies. For instance, what payment methods are allowed? Some companies only accept checks while others may only accept credit cards. Is there a minimum commitment? Many companies offer discounts for extended payments but be wary of signing a long term contact until you are familar with the services that a company provides. What are the cancelation policies? If you decide to cancel your account, be sure you exactly how to do so. While many Web Hosts are easy to deal with, others may make canceling a difficult process in order to make it difficult for you to leave. For example good web hosting services Avahost.net and ePowhost allow you to pay on a monthly basis and offer 30-days money back guarantee.

Research prospective Hosting Providers
One of the best ways to find a Web Host is to ask other people who they use. If they have had great results from a particular company, chances are that you will also get quality service. At the same time, people who have had bad Web Hosting experiences can tell you who to avoid. Of couse this is not an absolute method for choosing a Web Host since people can have different opinions about the same Host but is is a good way to get more information on potential companies.

As a result, what may constitute the perfect Web Hhost for one person may not serve the needs of another. Before you choose a Web Host, be sure to do some research and make sure the account you choose has the features you will need.

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