Posts Tagged ‘Tips’

Tips To Choose The Suitable Hardware You Need For Your Dedicated Server

July 5, 2010 - 3:32 am No Comments

Acquiring a dedicated hosting server is a great step toward getting the most out of your website. First of all, you increase the amount of traffic to your site, you can create a more impressive site than ever before, there is more disk space, and there is more bandwidth to work with. Second of all, the return on investment is considerably better than that of a shared server and credibility amongst browsers is enhanced.
The benefits of having a dedicated server are rather extensive in that the company can avoid many of the variables that interfere with the reliability of the server. Things such as overload, bad scripts, and bad codes are not really too much of an issue. The dependency on the web host is alleviated as is the lack of services and hardware that can be used to enhance the website.
In terms of hardware, it is important to choose suitable hardware that will enable the site to run efficiently. When choosing suitable hardware, consider these tips when doing so:
• Do research on what is a suitable processor to get the job done. How the processor is chosen is based on the amount of memory that is desired, what firewall options are required, and how big the hard drive needs to be. In other words, the choice of processor is going to be what controls the amount of space and protection that is provided to the website. Doing research on the internet to see which processor others are saying is best will ensure a good choice.
• Keep in mind that a Pentium 4 processor will perform better than a Celeron if hosting a number of powerful applications. The reason behind this is that the Pentium has a larger cache. However, Xeons may be the best bet because they actually perform better than the Pentium. Then again, choosing the AMD option may outperform Xeons by 30%, depending on the applications being powered. In other words, it is best to stay away from Celeron processors when choosing a processor.
• As for hard disks, keep in mind that hard disks do fail at some point. That is why it is good to have a second hard disk available for backup and even contact the hosting company regarding the costs associated with off-site backup. If your company decides to invest in a secondary backup system, try going with a SCSI because they have a lower failure rate. But it is inevitable that a hard disk will eventually fail. Again, do research on the internet to find the best hardware.
The processor and the hard disk are going to be the most important pieces of hardware acquired, aside from the actual computers. As for the actual computers, dedicated servers allow customers to choose their operating systems, so deciding which computer to purchase is not too difficult. The dedicated hosting services also allow the customer to choose their own hardware, so it is important to do all the necessary research to find the best fit for your particular business. Every site requires different amounts of memory and different speeds, so base the decision upon what is best and what it is you require.

Tips for Choosing Website Hosting Company

June 22, 2010 - 12:01 pm No Comments

A website hosting company is very much essential for establishing your website presence. It is not sufficient to just create a website; you need to have a domain which is provided by a website hosting company. As there are many such companies around, some thought and consideration has to be used in choosing the right website hosting company.

A very important point to consider is the amount of support the company gives you. You have to choose a web host that gives a good response to any problem you have; and in other words, has a good support system with 24/7 live chat support.

Choose website hosting companies with 99% uptime

The website hosting company has to have a minimum of 99% uptime, especially if you have a commercial website where you have to stay online continuously, without interruptions. In addition to this, the web host should have lots of web or disc space as there is always the possibility of you needing to expand your website over time.

Preferably, the website hosting company should offer you a web space of 1 GB so that you can add features and several scripts to your website if and when required. And if your web host permits you to hold multiple domains from an account, you definitely need more than 1 GB of disc space.

Choose the web host that provides you with a Cpanel hosting interface as it are easy for the beginner webmaster to use. With Cpanel, you can setup email accounts, manage files and databases and provide website hosting tools. In addition to this, Cpanel may also provide a system called Fantastico where installation of guest books, blogs and WordPress is made simple.

Check on the security features of the web host

If you own a business website that sells products or services, you need to choose a website hosting company that has e-commerce features like Agora shopping carts. Usually web hosts provide shopping carts for free. As scripts today usually use SSIs for inclusion of data, you have to ensure that you choose the web host that supports or activates SSI for your domain.

It is important that the website hosting company is fast as slow web hosts only lead to the loss of visitors while waiting for the loading of web pages. Choose web hosts with a minimum of a T1 connection for internet carriers; though T3 connections are faster or better.

As security is an important feature of all websites, you have to choose a website hosting company that provides you with sufficient security. It should have important security services like firewalls for protection from hackers.

Check on the bandwidth of the website hosting company as the higher is the bandwidth, the better it is for you. If you have lots of graphics on your website, you will need a lot of monthly bandwidth so choose the host with a minimum of 20GB bandwidth.

This is an important point for choosing website hosting companies as once your website uses more than the allotted bandwidth in a month, you may end up either with a suspension of your site or a hefty fee for each GB that you use. However, be careful of website hosting companies offering ‘unlimited’ bandwidth as these hosts usually have their policy terms printed in fine print.

cpanel hosting/-Free Tips Inside

May 30, 2010 - 9:30 am No Comments

Cpanel hosting is one of the easiest ways to host a website.  Many of the features that webmasters desire most are built into this central control panel.  While people do not always like the simple layout of the cpanel hosting system, it does provide a stable solution for people who are looking to keep things simple and create hosting accounts on a large scale.

One of the best ways to find affordable hosting with cPanel access is to search for shared hosting.  Shared hosting accounts are usually hosted on a server with hundreds of other websites, and may be slower than a dedicated server, but not by much.  These shared hosting accounts can be purchased for less than ten dollars per month, and depending upon the hosting company, less than five dollars per month.  You get a good amount of bandwidth and disk space, as well as many additional features such as email, and MySQL databases.  These hosting accounts are great for anyone who wants to host a personal blog or small website that shows off their skills.  While many people use cPanel for smaller sites, there is no reason that you cannot use cPanel on a very large website as well.  However, most of the hosting packages that are setup for cPanel are meant to work for smaller scaled websites.  You may just have to contact your web host in order to get a package that works out for you.

There are other types of web hosting control panels on the internet.  However, none offer the ease and amount of features that come with cPanel.  Everything that you have to do is contained within cPanel, which makes it easy to open up a forum, blog, mailing list and more.  Plus, once you have installed all those things on your hosting account and website, it is easy to track how many visitors you have coming to your website.

Tips When Buying A Cheap Yearly Hosting Package

May 29, 2010 - 1:34 am No Comments

If you are a small business owner venturing onto the web for the first time with a small website, it’s really not necessary to buy the highest priced hosting account out there. This is even more true if your website simply serves as a web presence for your business and you are not going to take online orders. The same goes for when you have a relatively small personal website with pictures of the family vacations. In all these cases a good cheap yearly hosting package will be all you need. There are a couple of things you should be looking out for though:A free domain name included with your hosting account is very nice to have. There are so many hosting companies including this with their free hosting packages that you can really pick and choose. Otherwise you will have to fork out another ten to fifteen dollars for a domain name. Some companies offer domain registration and then they include a free hosting account. The bottom line is how much you will be paying for a domain name plus a year’s hosting.The next important feature is the amount of hosting space included with the package. Beware of overselling. Even a couple of the big names are making themselves guilty of this at present. They advertise unlimited hosting space for a small monthly amount, but somewhere in their small print is a clause that enables them to close your account if you really use a lot of disk space. It’s a calculated gamble they take, because reality dictates that nobody can sell unlimited disk space for less than five dollars per month without going bankrupt.As far as bandwidth (data transfer) is concerned, the same holds true. Rather than pay more for bandwidth you don’t need, buy a hosting package with sufficient bandwidth for your needs at a price that suits your pocket. If you talk to web hosting experts you will quickly learn that the vast majority of websites never even use 1Gb of data transfer per month.There are nowadays a pretty standard list of features included with most hosting accounts. Compare a few and make sure the package you choose has what you want. For interactive websites you need the ability to use scripting languages such as ASP or PHP. It’s also nice if the company throws in a lot of free scripts, so you can impress your friends and colleagues with online forums, web forms and even a blog or social media section.The most important features as far as web hosting is concerned are not really the free scripts or other bells and whistles. It’s the uptime and technical support that count. It’s very frustrating to have your website go down every second day. And when things go wrong it’s even more frustrating to be unable to get technical support after hours or over weekends. Email their support on a Friday night. If you don’t get a reply before Monday morning, give them a wide berth!Cheap yearly hosting packages abound. Some of them will give you excellent value for your money while others are fly-by-nights. Do your homework and you can be assured that you will find a company that offers you years of good service.

Few Tips for Selecting an Appropriate Web Hosting Provider

March 29, 2010 - 9:22 am No Comments

One of the most important decisions one should make while deciding to put on his/her business on the web is which web hosting provider to use. The web hosting company that hosts one’s personal page may not offer the best plan for one’s business needs. The following are the several things one should take care while selecting a web host for one’s professional web pages.

Windows or *nix Web Hosting

When a web hosting provider is talking about an operating system, he/she means the operating system that his/her server uses. There is no need for Windows hosting if one is using a Windows operating system on his/her machine. Windows hosting is not required if one is building his/her pages in Front Page. The main reason for opting Windows web server hosting is that it enables to take advantage of .asp and .net programming capabilities, which can be extremely powerful. If one is not sure, then he/she should check with the person who will be designing his/her pages and ask for their recommendation.

Choice of Web Hosting Services

One must look for a web hosting provider that offers all the services that one needs in order to build the web site of his/her choice. The following are the services that make a good deal even better are:

Reduced price or free domain registration

When one is building a company web site, having his/her own domain name is very important to present a professional image. there are several web hosting providers that registers one’s domain name for free, and take care of all the details of renewing and updating information so that one need not to worry about it.

Secure server transactions on their server

If one is planning to accept payments or exchange personal information over the Internet, access to a secure server is most essential. One must look for a web hosting package that includes SSL in its basic price.PHP and mySQL support

If one chooses a UNIX server, PHP and database support can provide powerful tools for running applications and forums, content management systems and more. Most business and e-commerce plans include them.

Design Services at reduced prices

There are several web hosting providers offering professional web design services to their customers at a discount rate. Thus one should avail these discounts. The main advantage of a professional looking web site is that it inspires confidence in one’s customers.

Web-mail services and POP Email Boxes

One must also look for a business web hosting plan that offers the maximum POP email boxes so as to enable one to assign email addresses to all his/her employees and departments. The advantage of a web-mail interface is that it allows users to access their mail from any computer.

Thus one can find a web hosting provider that offers all the features that one wants and that too at an affordable price. The only thing required is one should do his/her home work properly i.e. he/she should compare all the hosts before selecting the most important one.

Web Hosting Tips for Searching a Web Host

March 21, 2010 - 8:00 pm No Comments

This article is useful for understanding the hosting industry and studies its dynamics to know what to look for before selecting a web host.

Firstly it is good to have a proper introduction of web hosting chain. It is termed as chain because here about 3 upstream providers serve the end consumer. First the web-hosting provider, who is in direct contact, then comes the web host’s upstream company who maintains the servers and sells space to web hosts, and above that, the data center that serves the purpose of providing the connection and houses the servers. There are some web hosts who act as the server administrator and liase with the data centers directly.

The growth of the web hosting industry in at saturation point due to the presence of hundreds of web-hosting providers claiming to provide cheaper and better services to businesses and individuals. The reason for this is the availability of resources in abundance and at cheaper costs with reducing disk space and data-transfer prices. Its easy to enter the web hosting business as there are large resellers of server space providing cheap hosting and reselling plans that provides ground to incomers to join the business.

Due to growing number of suppliers with cheaper reselling plans, more and more web hosting businesses are coming up providing web-hosting solutions to business and individual websites due to lower fixed costs and investment. Not only that this increase in supply is not caused by factors in any particular country. As Internet is not limited to the boundary of any country so the data centers present in any part of the world can easily provide the servers and web space for a local hosting company. Due to Internet it is easy to communicate to each other and providers can easily exchange their services in the global space.

Maintaining a proper balance between supply and demand is quite good for the customers. But imbalance has forced several new web-hosting providers to offer extremely low prices for their web hosting plans or packages in order to make them self stand in the tough market. Now it’s time for customers to choose the hosting providers having lowered prices from the vast number of providers.

However, continuous decrease in prices is quite disadvantageous for both the providers as well as the customers. By reduces prices, companies are able to earn nominal profit and are even not able to cover their support costs. Customers suffer by getting less support with their web-hosting accounts. It’s quite obvious if the profits do not justify the costs, web-hosting companies will easily close down and takes their clients’ sites with them.

The following are the factors to consider while choosing a web-hosting provider: -

The most important factor to consider is Support for any individual or small business looking for a web host for their websites. The Internet web-hosting provider who is unable to provide the facility of responding to emails within 24 hours is probably having problems providing fast and reliable support services. One can’t ignore the validity of these services especially for the beginners who needs guidance with publishing their websites on the web hosting account provided. The success of any web hosting business depends upon the relationships between web host and web hosting customers. To make business success, provider should be able to provide services when and where required also its crucial for customers to know when their site is going offline for sake of maintenance.

After support next important factor is Stability. It refers to how much uptime one can expect from the web-hosting provider, which in turn depends upon the providers’ servers and network. If the providers are not having reliable and stable providers, it would affect their servers and cause problems for the website. It is must to have an uptime of about 99.5% in the industry, as there are other external factors, which may be beyond control of the provider.

Third factor to consider is Cost which depends on the purpose of the website and budget. The budget may be smaller in case of Personal /Individual websites and so they opt to go with a cheaper web hosting provider, possibly in exchange for support and stability. But in case of business sites as they need better stability and support they opt for expensive host providers. It is most often observed that cheap web hosting providers are able to attract customers in the beginning by offering low prices but afterwards fails in providing quality support to their customers thereby creating problems for them. Also the large numbers of client sites cause sustained high server loads which leads to server crash thus hampering stability.

Another factor, which is not so important, is Location of the server. It is not considered important as it depends upon a user’s ISP/country’s connection to the data center where the server is located. Pings to the server normally tells the network latency to expect when people can access to one’s site. Lower ping rates leads to loading of site faster.

Last but not least one should take time to identify and contact a web host to check their service. This helps in providing an idea of the kind of support that one might receive and helps in deciding the reliability of the provider.

Six Tips Steps To Choosing A Web Design Company

March 19, 2010 - 10:24 pm No Comments

I am going to assume that you are like most people I know in business (and life!) and are therefore faced with the challenge of making the right decisions, relatively quickly, and in an informed manner. When it comes to choosing a web design company to design or re-design your website, you might not have time for lots of meetings, but in an ideal world you should probably try to meet with two or three different web design companies. Use the six steps below to guide you in making an informed decision that is right for your business:1. Make a shortlist of web design companies with potential 2. Spend some time looking at their portfolios 3. Meet them and see if you like them 4. Make sure they understand business (not just how to build a website) 5. Do they understand how to target customers? 6. Make your final assessment of their proposal and costs1. Make a shortlist of web design companies with potential. We suggest you first ask around for recommendations, (fire off a quick email to all your contacts!) and Yell.com for web design companies within your area. fore visit to:-www.thedesignbuild.comThink about how far are you prepared to travel if you want to go to their office for a meeting. (NB. A couple of our clients take a 3 hour round trip – but they say it’s worth it to be working with us!) When searching on Google, you might try searching for “web design company Surrey” or try to narrow your search with adjectives that are important to you, i.e. “beautiful web design Surrey” or “florist web design Guildford”. In any case, you will have many to choose from, so you may have to simply go through the results one-by-one, until you have two or three that look like they could be the right web design company for you. How do you do this?2. Spend some time looking at their portfolios. Any web design company worth dealing with should have on their own website, a well-presented portfolio of their clients’ websites. Spend some time browsing through these. Ask yourself if you find those websites appealing, easy to navigate and that they guide you to important information easily. Is there good use of colour, fonts, images etc? Do you think they have done a good job for their previous/existing clients, and have they worked for any clients in a similar market to you?Once you have a shortlist based on the best portfolios, choosing the right web design company for your business can be approached swiftly and intelligently using these key points to guide you:3. Meet them and see if you like them! We have more than one client who came to us after bad experiences with their previous web design company, bringing me swiftly on to a very important point: Don’t work with someone you have never met. Some web designers work by communicating only by email. It just doesn’t work. Establishing a good face-to-face rapport, which can be continued by telephone (and email as well of course!), is essential to building a productive and enjoyable business relationship. You need to have good, open, honest communication with your web design company so that you get exactly what you want, and maybe even have some fun along the way.4. Make sure they understand business (not just how to build a website) Modern, successful web design, (be it by one person or a big agency), will encompass the following three disciplines: 1. Business, 2. Creative and 3. Technical expertise. These are the Magic 3 – look out for them! You need to be able to talk business with your web design company, and for them to understand and make suggestions based on their experience. Their graphic design and technical ability should be clearly visible on their portfolio – you need to make sure all three boxes are ticked.5. Do they understand how to target customers? Although some web design companies specialise in designing for certain types of business, you will probably benefit from working with a company whose client-base is varied. Their experience working with such differing briefs and target audiences can bring a lot to the table (I’m talking clever ideas here – not a plate of biscuits).6. Make your final assessment of their proposal and costs Having met with the web design companies you should already have a good idea who is going to deliver what you need and be good to work with, but there is a last stage in this process. Following your meeting, you will receive the written proposal (a final chance to be sure that this company understands your needs and is able to meet them), along with a quote. The quote should be detailed (for example, more visit to:-www.my-early-days-on-the-net.com

 so you can clearly see how much time is allocated to the design, and coding the site). How to make the final decision? If you can afford it, simply go with the web design company that best meets your needs (based on all of the suggestions in this blog post).In these uncertain times, where the internet is becoming more important than ever for purchasing decisions, your business needs to be represented by an attractive, usable, informative website that appeals to your target audience. So why not get started today? Or you could put it off ’til later – you have nothing to lose but customers…!

Webhosting Tips to Select the Right Web Hosting Provider for yourself

February 19, 2010 - 2:25 pm No Comments

While choosing ones Web hosting provider one has to confront with thousands of companies, tens of thousands of different plans as out of these thousands of companies and plans only few are suitable for the website and online needs.

In today’s world Webhosting has become a part of the informational revolution brought by the Internet and it has become compulsory for both business and also individuals.

Here we are just going to point on few things related to choosing an adequate web host for a web site as there is no need explaining why a website is a must on World Wide Web. This business might seem very complicated but once one knows what to look for it is easy to find out. Stick to ones requirements after analyzing it properly.

Many inexperienced web owners often buy more than required while evaluating their needs in terms of space and bandwidth. Thus many web-hosting providers size their web servers taking this into account as this is exceptionally common and in fact over sell the space and bandwidth assuming that customers will never make full use of it.

Ask ones web host provider per server ration to avoid web hosts that result to just that or crowed their web servers to get an extra profit per customer. To become a clever buyer one should do this with all the other companies one finds interesting to do business with and are eligible to host web site. Never buy a web-hosting plan that fits just perfectly instead always leave some space as website is like a living creature which always grows so buy a little extra space so that when website is expanded one have resources available. Always leave margin for error too as supposing the initial bandwidth evaluation proves itself insufficient then one might not be able to use its website because of exceeded bandwidth. For both knowledgeable and less knowledgeable web owners most web hosting plans come packed with features and some even offer pre-installed scripts and programs that might come handy.

Do not forget things actually required like the OS (Operating System) or the PHP support, as one could consider any extra feature a plus. Do not allow the provider to tell something not required or is less than expected so one should decide of its own what is needed.

Importance of Support: – One might overlook Support facility when one finds an offer which is suitable both in terms of space, bandwidth and has all other facilities which one needs but remember all the good features will go in vein if one does not have good support. If the web-hosting provider is too careless then any technical problem, which arises, will take long hours to be solved even after making many support help calls thus curtailing the work.

If one wants to test the quality and how responsive the support personnel is then one should fire many pre-sales questions through email. Check if the response fact is enough. Now supposing that a conference has to be attended and the site is down and many clicks are expected, check if the website is online to get them and also whether the response one is getting from the support is thorough or is just scratching the surface and is the response understandable.

Look for these qualities when looking for good support: -

-Online support staff, help desk, message boards etc.

-Try to find on forums or discussion boards Information on the reputation of a web-

hosting provider.

-Would one like to be among one those discontented customers there?

Another aspect of the problem is reliability. Company’s web server’s uptime should be asked. Usually 99.9% of uptime is guaranteed by Most of the hosts, as 100% is not a realistic figure in the computer world. This guarantee means that, the money will be refunded for that month or free webhosting will be given for a month as compensation for web site being unavailable if the web site was not available 99.9% of the time.

Our sincere advice to everyone looking for web host provider is don’t try too hard to find the cheapest possible web host though it is true that one has to pay for paid web hosting. Still if one goes for cheaper one then within two weeks from the date of purchase one will stumble upon a better deal and thus will most likely end-up wasting an incredible amount of time. On the other hand paying extra amount to get what one could have got for less is also not a good deal. Getting 200 MB of space with 2 GB of bandwidth for $60 one is getting cheated and at the same time getting same service for $6 or $10 can be a good deal. A thin line between Nightmare of getting slow server response, unreachable support and irritating server downtime and Profitable and enjoyable web presence is drawn by individuals’ themselves.

So we conclude saying one should always choose ones web-hosting provider vigilantly who can live up the promises and can deliver good quality web hosting!