BlackMagnoliaDesign.com

Web hosting is all about managing your web site and keeping it online for your visitors to access. Your web host service provider makes your web site available for people to see. Web hosting has been divided into four basic parts. They can be known according to their prices and other differentiating factors as we will be discussing below.
The first we have is the free hosting, we also have shared hosting / Virtual hosting, Virtual Private Server Hosting and the last is Dedicated hosting.
Free Hosting
You should know that there are places where you can get free hosting for your web site or your blog. Free web hosting has improved in performance over the last couple of years but the services which they provide are a little poor and can not be trusted. You should know that with free web hosting, you can not get the actual speed you are looking for, however, if you are not really into speed then you can get free web hosting online.
Shared Hosting / Virtual Hosting
The Shared or the virtual web hosting is web hosting service whereby you can buy, and after buying you can add a number of accounts sharing resources on a single web server. With this service you are able to get into the web service through the control panel but using this you would have only a little storage capacity and also limited bandwidth, you would also pay monthly or even yearly depending on the web host service provider.
This shared hosting is favorable for businesses that do not have enough cash. This would be a private business or a medium scale business, using the shared hosting; you do not require enough resources. The performance of the web host may be poor because they manage a lot of accounts. Also, the shared web hosting service may be a little inactive if you are trying to have a huge number of visitors to you site or if you are trying to have some multimedia components. If you know that you do not have enough resources then you can start with the shared hosting and then upgrade if you have enough resources. The amount you need to pay monthly for the shared web hosting is not much; it’s just about $5-$15 monthly. The major advantage of the shared web hosting is that it is very cheap to get and also easy to access. However, the disadvantage is that the performance can be very poor and it also comes with limited features.
Virtual Private Server Hosting (VPS)
The virtual private server hosting is almost like the shared hosting, however, it has lesser accounts and also the owners of each account can have their own virtual space on the server operating system. The VPS has partition software that optimizes the server and its resources for the available number of accounts. The Virtual Private Server would be very useful to you if you have technical skill on it. For you to get a nice service, you have to pay about $50 monthly. The advantage of this is that you can have control over the server if you have the skill. The disadvantage is that it is more expensive than the shared hosting and also requires technical knowledge.
Dedicated Hosting
With this type of service you have almost full control on the server because you are the only customer. With this type, you can have media sharing, having large number of visitors to your web page and so many other things. This may be very expensive but you will get the service of what you pay for. The dedicated hosting can go for as much as $150. The advantage of this is that you have the best performance and it is also very reliable. The major disadvantage is that it is very expensive and you will need some really technical knowledge for you to manage it properly.
In conclusion, you have to pick the package that will favor you both technically and also financially. But for you to get the best in the service you have paid for, the dedicated hosting package will do you a lot of good in this regard.

There are a lot of benefits to using our Fee Joomla hosting.  A lot of times, people ask us, “Are we limited to only using our free Joomla hosting account for Joomla?”  The answer is no – you can use your free Joomla hosting account for anything you can think of.  Here are a few ideas on how to use your free cPanel hosting account for something besides Joomla:

1. Install any of the most popular PHP/MySQL open source software packages.

Your free Joomla hosting account is set up to allow you to use FTP, PHP/MySQL, and any other part of your free cPanel hosting account to set up any sort of software you’d like!

2. Use your free cPanel hosting account for backing up your files.

If you find a free cPanel hosting solution that allows you to manage your files with FTP (file transfer protocol), you now have a great way of storing online backups.  But remember – whatever you upload to your free cPanel hosting account will become public – so watch what you upload!

3. Share your pictures and photos with the world.

If you find a free cPanel hosting solution, then you should be able to do whatever you want with it – like upload your own images to share with friends and family!  Just upload your images, copy and paste a link in an email, and send it off to be seen by your loved ones.

4. Start or create a new online business.

With the right sort of free hosting, your new account will be able to sustain a great profitable online business.  You may be able to set up a new eCommerce solution or create a new sales letter that will promote your services – whatever you want!

 

These days, anybody can afford to order a feature-packed web hosting plan for next to nothing; however, cheap price cannot said to be the decisive factor which one should have to considered while purchasing web hosting services. This article provides a lesson of not considering the best price and features as the only passport of getting a good web hosting company but also emphasizing on reliability and honesty. If one is investing his/her money and effort into finding paying customers and he/she wouldn’t like to lose them in the condition just in order to save a few dollars per month on a web hosting service.

If a user is searching for a web hosting company, it is not a matter of concern that it is just for the inception of a web or the move of an established site; the user has to widen his/her thinking area before coming to a judgment that along which company he or she has to go with:

Customer support

Website hosting service is not restricted just to storage or bandwidth. Lacking customer support, a top-notch service is also nothing. If one is owning a business website, it is both duty and requirement of his/her hosting provider to be available for the service- 24/7, as any time any sort of technical fault may arise; neglecting it the hosting provider may suffer from serious shortage of customers and money.

Downtime assurance and service monitoring

It is a minor inconvenience to go down when it is a case of personal website; but it is serious when it comes to business website. Can anyone guess how much amount of profit would he/she lose if his/her site had been down for a week? As it is a trend of spending a large amount on advertising the website a long downtime can be lethal for today’s companies.

Basically, there are two rules upon which one can relay:

1. One should check if there is an uptime guarantee offered or not. An ideal service-oriented provider will not only give a money-back guarantee, but also offer a discount or free service as compensation for downtime. A company which avoids taking such liability will not provide an ideal service.

2. One should not go with a company claiming 100% uptime, as there is no such thing as a server with 100% uptime. If anyone ever announces that their server has a 100% uptime; one can easily conclude that they are either lying or they don’t perform the necessary upgrades that avoid a machine from being compromised.

Reputable web hosts will post statistics on their site, the remedial solution for the questions like for e.g., what is the frequency of interruption. How about the average percentage of downtime? If these aren’t posted, ask; if the answer isn’t forthcoming, that is not going to be a good sign. If one still likes to go with a host which doesn’t monitor servers, one has to do it by his/her own.

Backups

IS there any host who is safe against different types of technical and programical failures, the answer is NO! So, one should make sure that the company runs scheduled backups. The other probable advice would be that one must always have a backup of his/her website himself/herself, as one cannot predict what exactly is going to happen next. CPanel, currently the most popular web hosting management software, has a very comfortable backup-making tool. Which allows the user to backup files and databases quickly and easily, so backups are not a long head ace.

Acceptable use policy

Web hosts may have 200-300 or more clients per server; one cannot predict the exact number, as companies possess different hardware; while, each hosted website has different resource usage. One cannot ignore the probability of that a few of those customers host illegal content. There are several web hosts who have had their servers unplugged, resulting in their clients’ websites going down. Definitely ,one would never like to put his/her business at risk and locate the website hosted on the same server along with illegal pornography and software sites, so to avoid such types of problems one must check host’s acceptable use policy to find out, whether the host takes care of what’s hosted on their servers or not.

Hosting one’s site on an uncared-for server will also result in a low speed. If somebody on the same server sends spam, the server’s IP address will be blacklisted and he/she will have serious problems as recipients would stop his/her receiving emails. Spam is being sent almost everywhere, so having one or two red records isn’t that bad; but, if there are more, it may become a problem later on.

Infinite bandwidth and web space

If one talks about the adage “you get what you pay for” it ideally suit for the Web hosting industry. One should not fall in the craters created by the hosts like for e.g., unlimited allowances, as there is neither unlimited bandwidth, nor unlimited web space. Host’s pay for each GB of bandwidth themselves. One can think that hard drives are free but they aren’t. They are just a mirage to attract customers. The average website doesn’t use more than 1GB of bandwidth per month; the customer is satisfied as he/she bought something “unlimited” and through this host automatically receives a new customer, on whom they don’t need to spend more than $1-2 USD per month. But for imagination what would happen if one person had a website, burning much more bandwidth than an average site does, and he signed up with a hosting company offering unlimited traffic? The host would simply suspend his account and tell him, that it was via too much bandwidth. There even several companies there which offer unlimited bandwidth for the user and have a statement on their requisites of service, explaining that unlimited bandwidth means 40GB which they actually mean, for example.

Will someone really own his/her domain name?

If a user buy a domain name together with a website hosting package, he/she must make sure that the host is registered the domain name under his/her name or not. The name usually should be written in their FAQ, but, if there is no such information is provided, the user simply needs to take a step and contact them. This will also give the user a chance to detect whether their customer support team is fast enough or not. If the hosting company registers domains under someone else’s name, the user may have to face the challenges switching hosting providers later. If the user is in such situation, he/she have to file for a Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which costs much beyond both domain name and web hosting service together.

Control Panel

A necessary tool for easiness and for regular maintenance, including, email mailbox additions/deletions, password resets, web additions, web count reports, statistics etc. This tool is unavoidable if the site is meant for any sort of business. That is why it is currently the most demanding web hosting management software. It is behind the screen role of a next-generation web hosting control panel system that allows a user to manage his/her domain through a web interface. The key idea is to transfer as much of the control of managing users web site to him/her; So one can say that, user have the ability to manage all the dimensions of e-mail, files, backup, FTP, CGI scripts, web site statistics, etc.

Value-added services

In the regular interval of time, hosting companies offer diverse sort of value-added services in order to give themselves an outstanding look. Of course, these are an advantage, but customers forget that many of the services cannot be applied in any of the field. But still some of the valuable features are mentioned below:

1. Auto-installer script –

Play a role saving the user’s time if he/she is going to install a forum, image gallery, content management system, etc. Installation procedures on an auto-installer script can be done in seconds and can be easily performed by novices by avoiding difficult tasks generally related with installations.

2. Online website builder –

Mainly dedicated with showing the way by moving on which the user can design a website in a few minutes without having any creation software and knowledge. One very powerful website builder established in the market is Site Studio; this quality based editor allows for ease of use, full control of color schemes and themes, one-click publishing, and a collection of templates to brought into use.

The last tip

The purpose of this article is to feel the users that price and allocations cannot be given reference over importance of quality of service; if the user possess limited budget, then the price can be a valid criterion, but if not, it should not be given much importance.

By going through this article and asking questions, one can narrow down the list of web hosts to the extent where the user by his/her own can make the judgment between what is right and what is wrong

If one’s new website is all set to upload, the next desirable thing for him/her is a web host. Conceivably he/she already possesses a web host, but uptime and support are lacking. With several scattering web hosts all around how can the users choose an ideal one? One should be aware of what can go wrong and what to look out for, and investigate prospective web hosts cautiously.

Mistake, which may appear with web hosting

Excessive downtime:

It is inevitable that problems arise in the course of time happen, but even in the condition in which they don’t appear server maintenance results in a minimal amount of downtime. One can not only hope a dependable web host for well maintenance of his/her servers, but also expect monitoring the servers and fixing of problems immediately. With the type of web host one want to avoid, however, his/her site may be down for days.

Features that cannot be put in use:

Once the email of the user doesn’t work, his/her business shuts down. Problems related to databases and other features can also deliberate down or stop his/her business. Such problems are taken into consideration by several web hosts, but a few don’t concern to give high priority on keeping not only the user’s site online but everything working as well.

Ghastic support:

The response time taken by the dependable web hosts to answer tech support questions is utmost a single hour. Other web hosts, however, have been recognized to take several days to give response. And when those responses come, often they’re canned responses that don’t deal with the issue.

Poor communication:

If proper level communication skills are present, it supports people to restrict problems from becoming bigger problems. As told, “Everything looks fine here, so the problem is solved,” promotes irritation. Thus, one’s site can shut down because it has used plenty of resources rather than the web host contacting him/her about the problem first.

Troubles of Billing:

Yet problems persist even after user cancels his/her account. A number of below dependable range web hosts don’t repute their refund policy. Others do not discontinue the automatic billing even after cancellation of account.

Things to watch out for:

One should consider the following as the red flags to warn the user of possible problems that can come on their way.

Untenable pricing:

If the pricing looks to the extent of superb to be true, it perhaps is. Will it be sufficient to pay for server maintenance and tech support? One gets similar what he/she deserve to pay for.

Limitless bandwidth:

There is not anything which is really unlimited in real sense. If one signs up for an account offering limitless bandwidth and then uses a lot of bandwidth, anticipating having the plug pulled on his/her site. The web host may locate further excuse for discontinuing his/her account, but “unlimited” classically represent that “as long as you don’t use a lot.”

A website with unprofessional look:

The user foremost consider how much effort the web host is putting in providing a usable website along with informative content. Does it really mean that user has got full confidence in the web host, or is it overwhelmed of unsubstantiated statements and grammar and spelling mistakes? A web host doesn’t require being a specialist in spelling insertion, of course. But if the company hasn’t advertise much enough to the user about their services, will they be meticulous about matching the clients’ requirements?

Way to research web hosts:

It is quite easy to look out for web hosts. Search engines can be one of the ways to went on the websites of thousands of web hosts. But short listening after going through features and price, how can the customer look out which web hosts are reliable?

Interpret particulars of web host package and TOS:

If the host provider is offering hosting packages with huge amounts of disk space and bandwidth for quite cheap prices, that means something is fishy around. One should not expect that company to be well equipped with enough money for maintenance and support.

If one wants to be sure that he/she can get a refund if he/she want one, should ensure what the Terms of Service (TOS) signify about refunds.

One should examine the web host forum:

User should be aware about the questions like, what is the ambience in the forum. Are clients’ questions answered satisfactorily? The user should not be anxious on seeing a problem but in the condition when they don’t. It is quite common that, some web hosts remove posts that don’t demonstrate their company in a positive light. But if posts about problems stay in the forum, the user can easily monitor the way the host use to tackle the problem.

User should examine web host reviews:

There is no lack of cases in which, client feedback at the web host’s site perhaps may or may not be legal. One could not ignore the possibility of manufacturing of feedback and tracing it from other sites. The user should inquire about that via different web sites.

There are several forums which permits people to post their web host reviews. While reading the reviews, one should deem the poster’s credibility. A few people knock their hosts just because of the reason that they’re unhappy about somewhat. If the host posts in response to a problem, the user should inquire the way host tries to resolve it.

Inquire about the background of the company:

The page which displays the points like “About Us” or “Company Background” should disclose the answer of following questions.

1.) The experience of the company in this sector. A new company perhaps is excellent, but it’s good to keep in mind that an ample of businesses fails within the first year.

2.) Does the company use to publish a privacy policy? And does this policy clearly protect clients’ privacy?

3.) Where are the servers located? Ideally, they should be in a datacenter, and not in someone’s basement.

4.) About the server uptime statistics? If the web host doesn’t publish a link to a server uptime monitor, one should ask for a link to one. Uptime of about 99.7 percent or higher is usually considered good.

5.) Does the company publish an address? The user perhaps should not be in the need of it, but when he/she placing his/her company website in another company’s hands, it is his/her right to know that the company is legal and handy.

Email pre-sales queries

Response to user’s pre-sales questions will tell more than enough about the web host. One can easily judge how fast the company responds and about their communication efficiency. One can ask questions about any of the above points as well as questions precise to his/her requirements.

There is no doubt, that, Finding a dependable web host spends time, but dealing with problems and moving one’s site rather takes more amount of time. The time spent searching for a reliable web host is a worthwhile investment.