Open Source List

Archive for January 4th, 2010

It seems as if almost everyone has incorporated the internet as a part of their daily activities. People are frequently using the net to communicate, socialize, listen to music, download videos and a lot of stuff we would rather not discuss. As a modern-day freelance writer, the internet is something I just can’t be without. The popularity of this worldwide network has led to the emergence of several online markets and the web hosting business is thriving like no other. With more people looking to benefit from all the resources of the internet and World Wide Web be it for personal or business reasons, web hosting firms have been able to make out rather nicely.

What is Web Hosting?

Website or web hosting, is a service that allows you to have your very own website. How does it work? Well, you sign up with a web hosting provider and they allocate disk space among other resources,  for you on a high-capacity computer, more commonly known as a web server. Hence the name, the web host’s server serves your website pages on the web, making them accessible to internet users throughout the world. Nearly every site on the web is being powered by one web hosting company or another.

Types of Web Hosting

There are many different types of web hosting available, each of which are geared towards businesses, webmasters and developers at varying levels. Some of the most popular types of web hosting including the following:

Shared Hosting

The most common type of web hosting, shared hosting describes a situation where you are literally sharing server space and various resources with other website owners.  Simplicity and cost-efficiency has made this arrangement quite popular among individuals and small businesses.

Dedicated Hosting

More commonly termed as a dedicated server, dedicated web hosting refers to a situation where you have an entire server dedicated to your website or business. Server space and all resources are made exclusive to you, providing the utmost in control and flexibility.

Managed Hosting

Managed hosting generally refers to the full managing and servicing of a dedicated server.  This may include server administration and database management among other services.

Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting is a situation where you purchase server space and associated resources from a web hosting provider and then sell it to your own customers. A reseller essentially acts a middleman between the customer and the web hosting company.

As you can see, web hosting comes in a variety flavors and these are just a few of many. Narrowing them down and finding one that suits your needs isn’t always easy but one thing is for certain – with all the providers currently on the market, there is sure to be a host capable of meeting your needs.

In this video, I talk about a new premiere web hosting company called Squarespace.com. I learned about this site when I appeared on This Week In Tech (TWiT), and I decided to check it out. Squarespace takes a different approach on the typical control panel and gives you a WYSIWYG interface which is basically drag and drop and clickable. Squarespace doesn’t require you to know HTML or CSS. If you are interested in trying it, there is a 14-day free trial. There are many different plans/pricing …

One should act very smartly or can say intelligently while making decisions regarding web hosting services and plans. One who is serious for his/her business can suffer later on, if his/her decision of choosing web hosting went wrong. Due to inefficiency of the web hosting plan one can face loss by decreasing of sales as well as loosing the customers. One should not make decision in haste while choosing the web hosting plan rather he/she should study all the options and compare all the advantages as well as disadvantages, then make the decision accordingly .If the decision is made after studying every aspect then only it will prove very fruitful for the business.

What are the requirements of the user? A Personal Home Page or a Business Site Hosted

Before moving further the user should be very clear about his/her requirements and one of them is what type of the website he/she desires and want to have hosted. User should choose the plan as per his/her needs as if the user is running a small business then he/she does not require the larger hosting plans. If the user is going to plan on having a large ecommerce site hosted, then small hosting plan will not fulfill his/her obligations and the user have to move for the web hosting services providing all the bells and whistles. After deciding about the type of website one can easily host and compare all the services and plans and then can opt for the most suitable one.

Amount of Data Transfer And Disk Space Offered From The Web Hosting Plan:

While deciding about the plans, user should be very clear about the disk space and bandwidth he/she requires and then compare all the plans and choose the hosting plan that can easily manage the data transfer from his/her business promotions that can cause large amounts of traffic. This is very clear to the user that if he/she is going to deal with a simple home page then he/she will not need much disk space and bandwidth. When the user is clear that what he/she actually requires from the web hosting service, options and plans, then only he/she is able to make decision.

Web hosting needs should be considered earlier:

The points to be considered by the user of the web hosting services are, the cost and fees, customer support, control panel, POP email accounts, FTP transfer limits and if the user have unlimited space transfer.

Economic factor: Cost of Web Hosting and Possible Setup Fees?

Economic factor matters a lot for all kind of users as every one want best services at the most reasonable price. The user should be well aware before paying for the services as he/she should know that what he/she is paying for. Before making the payment user should compare the costs of the web hosting plans, and should know what the actual costs are, before signing up .User should have the complete knowledge about the prices as well as of the setup fees.

Support provided From The Web Hosting Company to its customers:

Before signing any hosting plan user should look at the support provided by the company to the customers .Customer support is very important aspect which can not be ignored as customer can need the company’s support any time. If customer support is not provided at proper time then in result his/her site will remain down for long periods of time. A company is said to be a reliable company if it is able to provide the support service of 24 hours a day customer support. User should also study about the experience of the company and also the support provided to its customers. User can easily check with the references to see how the web hosting company rates with customer service. If customer is aware of all these aspects it will be very helpful for him/her for making decision and can save himself/herself from the time and money loss.

Services available -Is Control Panel Available or not?

The new entries in this web world don’t have proper knowledge and much experience with web hosting control panels. Due to this reason they can suffer from severe problems many times. So before moving to any decision the user should collect all the complete information such as-

1. What type of control panel the web hosting service offers?

2. Is it user friendly or not?

3. Last but not the least that it suites all the requirements?

Control panel is not required by an experienced webmaster may not need a control panel, but it is necessary for rest of the users.

What about the availability of POP Email Accounts?

There are some other aspects as well which user can’t afford to miss. One such aspect is POP email accounts being offered by the provider. E-mail service is the service that is needed by many business plans from their web hosting plan. User should look out for the availability, if he/she desires access to email accounts.

Plans offering FTP Transfer limit as per requirement:

User should be sure enough about the FTP transfer limits with the web hosting services he/she is going to opt for. User should also watch out that the web hosting plan he/she is choosing offers FTP transfer according to his/her business needs. He/she should save himself/herself from those web hosts that do not have unlimited FTP use.

Some more things to be known by the user about the web hosting plan are:

1. Does they offer unlimited space transfer?

2. What are the terms of the services regarding upgradation?

3. Availability of the space if more needed in the future.

If the user does not look out for the terms of the space availability in its web hosting service then he/she can suffer from the problems regarding space, as if the user needs more space later on he/she will not be getting it.

User is able to make the proper decision of choosing the web hosting service only after having the complete information of each and every services provided by the web host.

Almost every one has the knowledge of present internet scenario! How fast it is!!? A bud of web pages nurture to trillions of pages on the Internet, providing several hosting plans to choose from under which comes affordable web hosting, Cheap Web hosting, ASP Web Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated Servers, eCommerce Hosting, FrontPage Web Hosting, Hosting With Templates, Managed Web Hosting, PHP Web Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting, Unix / Linux Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, Windows Hosting, Co-location Hosting and few others.

Above mentioned are the few web hosting terms which reflects several faces of web hosting. The entire highlighted web hosting plans and terminologies can be categorized in terms of cost, programming languages, operation systems, Web servers, and functionality.

Broad description is given below:

1. Cost:

Web hosting plans are mentioned and divided between affordable web hosting, budget hosting and cheap web hosting. Cost of web hosting is the prime aspect that several small budget site holders are looking for. On displaying the cost of Affordable web hosting, budget hosting or cheap web hosting plan one will come to know that it is less than $5 a month.

2. Programming Languages:

When a user wants to make his/her site dynamic and interactive, he/she should search for hosting plans that support the programming languages that user have command over. Usually applicable languages are PHP, ASP, JSP, PERL etc. Hosting plans assisting such programming languages are called PHP Web hosting, ASP Web hosting, JSP Web hosting or PERL Web hosting.

3. Operating Systems:

After selecting suitable programming language(s), user still has sovereignty to choose the operating system that can host the concern websites. Moreover, as everybody that ASP is restricted to Microsoft Windows, further programming languages, PHP, JSP and PERL; work not only on Windows, but also on UNIX and Linux. Hosting plans assisting particular operating system is termed as Window Hosting, UNIX hosting or rather Linux hosting.

4. Web Servers:

Talking about web servers, Apache is the most widely supported Web server in Web hosting industry. It operates only on Microsoft Internet Information Server or IIS server. For JSP hosting, Web logic or Web sphere is the main requirement. When ever there is any discussion related to Web servers, the main attraction is server performance. There are several solutions available like Managed Web Hosting, Shared Hosting, Dedicated Servers, or Virtual Private Servers (VPS). Out of these shared hosting is the cheapest plan, and one can host as many sites as he/she likes with a Reseller Hosting option. The cost of VPS is just $50 a month, and Dedicated Server plan costs from $50 – $100 or more per month depending upon storage space and bandwidth of the hosting plan.

5. Functionality:

In the market, one can find several hosting plans which either makes the site creation simple or rather offer assistance for the protection of online transactions. Creating a simple website can be a game of certain hours if the hosting plan selected by user supports assorted templates.

Thus on the hope that this article will definitely serve its users we wish best of luck.

The motto of the user is to choose web-hosting company, which in within his boundary of budget but to select one from several available it is both overwhelming and challenging. Merely typing the word “web hosting” in any search engine like google will return with millions of documents and millions of host providers. Now the biggest problem is to get one out of those several hosters.

What is Budget web hosting?

Budget web hosting in the simple sense is that which offers its services with charge of minimum $10 per month. But the important consideration is not that price but also the duration that they are offering. While comparing the quotes of different companies one most take care for both the annual as well as monthly charge quoted by companies as some companies quotes annually where it needs to divide that amount by 12 months to get them converted into monthly amount so as to compare them with other monthly given charges. But important must be to note if they are charging any setup fee as it can be terms as hidden cost which needs to be taken care of while selecting for budget web hosting. Forming general impression for the company.

After considering the above parameter of money next would be to get a general impression of the company, which can easily be formed after looking on the company’s front page. The points to be taken care of includes if the company is depicting professional outlook? If they have given in their contact address just email address and phone number only or do they have shown their physical address also? As if the physical address is not given then on the verge of any problem with the website then due to lack of proper contact information one can get into big trouble.

If proper customer support services are available.

Another thing to take care of is the support services. It is important to check if the company is having any toll free number to contact them and where are they based? As if location of company is far away then it will be much costly to use phone to contact them for a far away distance say in other city or country. Another best feature of company’s having toll free number is that it shows that the company is keen to deal with their customers openly and with honesty. Is there any guarantee or just warranty?

Another thing to note does the company, often companies, give the guarantee tends to give just mere warranty or they hide satisfaction guarantee. For selection one must choose only that company, which is, offer money back facility against dissatisfaction else one must look for other company. Is there any uptime guarantee of site given?

There must be uptime guarantee of site given. Uptime guarantee of site refers to the amount of time the server is live and serving the home pages. Uptime guarantee of 99% means the host is guaranteeing that their servers tend to be up and in operation 99% of the time. During the tenure of one year 99% uptime refers a downtime of one percent i.e. 87 hours in a year or 7 hours per month server wont be available. Thus that is an important consideration.

The user can try the given below guidelines to make the process of finding “cheap” hosting service a lot easier.

1. Act smart:

The user should keep his/her mind sharp while dealing for a use or rather acceptable use policy of that particular cheap web host. One can easily locate fair deal, due to immense competition prevailing in the cheap web hosting industry however if the user find a host offering features at an extremely cheap amount as compare to other hosts, then, BEWARE, user should never deal with such people.

2. Perform additional research:

A user should confirm about the host from several sources like reviews, related details from search engines, and even by verifying their experience in this particular sector. One should go to the support pages and see whether their provided support level matches one’s requirement or not. One cannot expect to receive best ever support for every mere little trouble which user receive through payment less than per month.

3. Check support:

These types of businesses would not survive as capable support personnel demands money. If one talks about larger companies and Windows plans then they are generally quite costly. It is a matter of fact that, cheap web hosts sell additional amount of space and bandwidth, predicting not total exploitation of it by the user. It is quite usual and there will be no negative impact on the user if he/she utilizes all the owed space and bandwidth. The user should be aware of the fact that, cheap web hosts often do not have full command over their servers and it is possible that they might have a dedicated server with another company in order to save their cost. Due to this reason only they are sometimes forced to depend on others to perform some physical tasks like replacing some hardware on the server or other sort of technical problem which they are unable to handle.