Finding the Best Web Hosting Service

Finding the best hosting service for your website can be complicated. There are almost endless options all clamoring to be the top hosts or the least expensive service, and this can make it almost impossible for webmasters to sort fact from fiction. The best way to select a quality web host is to take the selection process one step at a time:

Assess Your Needs

The very first item to address in selecting the best hosting service for your needs is to actually identify what those needs are. What sort of website are looking to host? Small personal homepages will have very different hosting criteria from large company websites. To find the best hosting service for you, it is important to determine exactly what you plan to host now, and ideally take into consideration anything you are planning to host in the immediate future.

Rate

Different hosting companies offer a large variety of rates. Companies offering dedicated servers will be substantially higher than others offering budget hosting with limited bandwidth. Competition from overseas is priced temptingly low for many, but there are many factors to consider. Don't stop at price, and if you plan on using your website in a professional capacity, it is important to move beyond free web hosting. Free hosts are great for small family or fun sites, but are not suited to the needs of internet marketers – even those just starting out. Rate should not be a top determining factor until you have narrowed a list based on other criteria such as:

Reliability and Speed

The best hosting services will offer uptime of over 99%. This should be a guarantee to motivate the company to keep all servers up all the time. Of course, visitors should also be able to access your site quickly.

Data Transfer and Disk Space

Bandwidth requirements grow with your site. Web hosting companies pay for bandwidth, so you, the one using that bandwidth will be billed accordingly. It is far better to pay for the required amount of data transfer upfront rather than get a surprise bill in the mail for having gone considerably over your allotted amount. By the same token, be sure you have an appropriate amount of disk space reserved. Most websites require less than 3GB.

Technical Support

It is very important to be able to reach the hosting company if your website begins experiencing problems. The best hosting support one can hope for is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Most companies know this, so take their stated hours with a grain of salt. Always spot check the companies with email at random times to see if they really have someone available to help 24/7.

Scripts and Special Features

Different websites have different needs, and the best hosting service for you should accommodate those needs. Email addresses should be standard as well as the capacity for a variety of scripts. Be sure to see if other features like shopping carts and secure servers are available or standard.

Control Panel

How much control does the hosting company offer webmasters? It is inconvenient to work through customer service every time to modify a password or to change email addresses. Be sure hosting companies offer some form of a control panel accompanying hosting.

Article by:webhostinggeeks.com

Features of a Web Hosting

Before hosting a web site on a web server so that millions around the world can view your site, a lot of efforts is made to provide the site with a good content. Experts are hired to provide a good and meaningful content to a site. A meaningful content attracts a user and provides him the necessary information. Millions of dollars are spent so as to promote a site. To continuously get traffic to a site, various techniques are practiced.

Advertisements are posted on the websites, and the sites earn a large amount of money from these advertisements. Companies today pay quite a sum of money to increase the ranking of their site. Apart from advertisements and promotions, a quality web hosting server is a necessity. Web hosting is a technique that facilitates the servers to host the site.

There are a number of companies that provide web hosting facility to users. Some of them provide the service for free while others charge you. However, it is advisable that you select a paid web hosting service as you will be provided with customer service and uptime guarantee, which is not the case with service providers that provide the facility for free. Also, if a person requires saving a large number of images and graphics, a free service will not serve the purpose. There are various kinds of web hosting, they are,

• Reseller hosting
• E-mail hosting
• Clustered hosting
• Free hosting
• File hosting
• Game server hosting
• Shared hosting
• Video hosting
• Blog hosting
• Image hosting
• Wiki farms
• Guild hosting
• DNS hosting

Since there are several web hosting companies available, you should select the best web hosting service provider. Narrow down the number of service providers as per your need and budget. The most important point to be kept in mind is not to subscribe for the feature that you may not use. It is advisable that you read blogs and web hosting reviews on the Internet. It will give you a true picture of the quality of the services provided by web hosts service providers.
The sites give rankings to a number of service providers on the basis of the feedbacks provided by the users.

Other factors that must be considered while subscribing to a web service provider are,

• reputation
• server space
• control panel
• bandwidth
• script access
• support

The service providers should be compared on the basis of their customer service support staff, traffic, price and space. The additional features differ from one provider to another. It is recommended that you select the company that suits your needs instead of selecting a top web hosting service provider that may or may not be affordable.

There is a very high possibility that you may face problems in the web hosting process. In such a case, only a company that provides 24 hour customer service will be useful. Server space and bandwidth should be considered as per your usage. It is important to choose a good quality web hosting service provider as it increases effectiveness of your organization.

Article by:webhostinggeeks.com

Beginner’s Guide to Web Hosting

Web hosting is basically an Internet service that allows companies and individuals to create their own space on the Internet. Web hosting companies have servers that act as data centres. Customers will give files to their web hosting companies and those files will be stored in the data centres. They can then be found by anybody who wants to visit that person’s or company’s website.

There are many web hosting services available, mainly these are divided between free web hosting and paid web hosting. Free web hosting is just that – free and the customer doesn’t pay a thing. This is more suitable towards people who are just beginning to have a website on the Internet. A paid web hosting company will charge for their services and offer more features to their customers. This is ideal for small companies that are going to be expanding or for large companies. Free web hosting will only allow for limited space and subdomains for the person’s site.

There are many different paid web hosting companies that can be found online. The prices will depend on what type of services they offer. One can choose from a dedicated server, where one server will be dedicated to only that person’s file, or from a shared server. This is when many people are using the same server. It’s best to start with a shared server to see if the web hosting company offers what is needed. If the individual is satisfied with the service, it is then an appropriate time to move to a dedicated server.

There are many benefits that can be derived from web hosting. The first is that the person or company will get their own web space. This provides the person with enough storage to keep all of their files and data to be published online. These files include web pages, images, audio, and videos. These are just a few of the files that may be kept by web hosting. The average amount of space that is provided by web hosting is 200MB. The more expensive packages can reach anywhere up to 500MB.

Free email is another advantage that customers can enjoy from web hosting. This is much different than the public email addresses provided by Hotmail or Yahoo. This email address will be exclusive to the individual’s website. For example, if the website is called “Music.com”, the email can then be downloads@music.com. These types of email addresses are more than just handy to remember, they are important for serious businesses. It shows customers that they are dealing with a reputable company who is interested in spending money to make their business grow.

Another advantage to web hosting is bandwidth. This is simply the amount of information that is transferred over the Internet. When a web hosting company provides appropriate bandwidth, it is easier for users to view the web page. This is especially true when there are many images, audio, or videos on one page. Users like to have a website that is easy to use so bandwidth is extremely important.

Article by:webhostinggeeks.com

How to Select the Best Web Hosting Company?

WWW works or world wide works forms a base for a web hosting business. The information of the web is saved on web pages. These are files that are saved on computers known as web servers. The computer that reads these web pages is web clients. These clients analyze the pages with a computer program such as Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. WWW or World Wide Web is a network that connects the computers all over the world and thereby the people from different countries. This globalization led to several businesses both small scale and large scale promotes their products online and caters to a wide range of consumers.

So, to make this possible, it is essential for every business organization to have their website. This website to be displayed in the rankings of the search engines, which are to be accessed by Internet user anywhere in the world and thereby place an order for the products offered on the site. However, the designing of site can be done either by the owner himself or he can get it done from some professional. Once this is done, the owner needs to book a space with a public web server so that the site is to be displayed to the Internet users. If the owner is acquainted by the technical concepts, he can do it by himself from his computer. The other alternative is to get it done from a web hosting company.

With so many web hosting companies offering its services, selecting the best web hosting company is not an easy task. One of the key factors that are to be considered during this time is the uptime of the site which is being granted by the company. Going for a company that provides a 99.9% of uptime is the right option available. This is because, only if your site is available for users to access all the time, it will be able to earn more profit. Technical support that is provided by the company is also essential. That is to say, the owner should ensure that the company which he is selecting should have all the software and features that are the prerequisites for your sites. So, all such needs should be analyzed beforehand and taken care off while selecting a web hosting company.
The owner of the site should have a specific budget that he can spend on web hosting of his site keeping in mind the features that are necessary on the site. At times, there are also companies that may claim to provide free web hosting services but make you pay more than the normal expenditure that should have been incurred.

Taking all this points together, will help you select a top web hosting company for yourself. Last but not the least, web hosting reviews can also be of great help in the task. One can search for them over the Internet and select a company that best suites your needs and budget.

Article by:webhostinggeeks.com

Netfirms Review

Our Detailed Netfirms Review & Analysis

Netfirms first caught our eye about 3 years ago when we reviewed their $9.95/month Advantage hosting plan. What we found back then was a company that offered many great features, but lacked consistency. For example the included site building software was a real bonus, however actually using it to build a website turned out to be a real chore.

Fast-forward couple of years. Aside from getting a glowing review by the Wall Street Journal for their E-commerce Pro shopping cart system, Netfirms has been a regular news item in the hosting circle for their low-cost ".com" domain names, a newly released Control Panel and substantial feature updates to their hosting product lineup. We thought it was about time to take another look.

Just as we did before, we opted to review their $8.95/ month Netfirms Advantage web hosting plan, which now includes a massive 250 GB of storage space and 2000 GB of monthly transfer . In fact at that price point you would be hard pressed to find more storage space or bandwidth anywhere else (check our top 8 hosts). Netfirms has obviously raised the bar with these specs.

The Netfirms Control Panel XL6 is one of the best control panels we have ever used!

Signing up with Netfirms was a breeze, and as was the case last year we were greeted with a welcome e-mail containing our account information almost immediately after we clicked "checkout". We could FTP to our webspace and access our website literally 30 seconds after we signed up! This may not seem significant, however many other hosting companies take hours or even days to activate a new account.

Netfirms recently launched an upgrade to their web hosting control panel, now labeled Control Panel XL6. Their old one left us with mixed feelings, so we were anxious to put this new one to the test. Of course all web hosting companies include some sort of web-based control panel to manage website, e-mail, domain name and account settings. Unfortunately the usability and features included with these control panels vary greatly and really make or break a hosting plan.

The good news is Netfirms' new XL6 Control Panel really is an improvement over their previous offering and is now one of the best control panels we have ever used (on par with 1&1's stellar offering). It is fast, looks really polished and is loaded with all sorts of cool features. For example the "Site Tools" tab contains "one-click" installers for the popular WordPress blogging tool, the Wall Street Journal recommend Commerce Pro shopping cart, a file manager, photo gallery, password protection and about 15 other applications. As advertised we had a blog up and running in just a few seconds. Wow!

Domain and e-mail management are also above average with many new features, including the ability to host multiple websites with a single account. We added 3 domain names to the domain manager and could create unique e-mail addresses and web folders for each domain name. Not too many hosting companies allow you to do this (Media Temple does), but it really is a great feature and should be something that all hosts allow you to do. Of course the additional domain names we added were free, as the Business Advantage plan includes 2 free domain names. Another bonus!

In our old review of Netfirms we really felt their "business class" e-mail service could use an upgrade, and again it seems that Netfirms has delivered. Their WebMail 2.0 application now includes spam filtering (free of charge) and auto responders (two features that were noticeably absent last year).

That said there is still no way of sending mass e-mail (eg. newletters to your customers) short of installing your own application. To put this to the test we installed Interspire's popular SendStudio e-mail marketing suite and launched a test campaign to 500 of our closest friends. Upon doing so we were quickly greeted with an e-mail from Netfirms support indicating that we would need to agree to an additional terms of service before we could continue with our mass mailing. Considering many web hosting companies have banned e-mail marketing completely we found this to be an interesting approach.

Netfirms has also upgraded their web hosting platform, which now includes MySQL 5+ and PHP 5. It is good to see that Netfirms is committed to offering current versions of the most popular web development tools, although we would still like to see Cron-Jobs and log files (also mentioned in last years review). We have had a test website up and running with them for over a year now and have experienced very little downtime (none that we have noticed). Our webpages are delivered fast at all times of day from coast to coast in North America and Europe. For anyone hosting a small business website this is a must.

As for technical support Netfirms still excels, mostly. The knowledgebase is easily searchable and contains more articles than ever before. E-mail response time is quick, but as was the case last year, was still a little hit or miss with more advanced PHP questions. This time we got mixed answers (unresolved) to a question relating to the installation of the SendStudio application mentioned earlier. It wasn't a showstopper, but it did slow us down. Furthermore Netfirms still does not provide a toll-free support line, even during regular business hours.

Netfirms has positioned itself as a web hosting company for small business, and they really do deliver. Netfirms is now a truely a leader in web hosting industry and hosts over 1.2 million websites. Over the course of couple of years everything has gotten easier, better and faster; and we liked them before! Getting a website up and running was surprisingly easy with the new Control Panel XL6 and WordPress, and the included 250 GB of storage space is really, really generous. At $8.95 per month the Netfirms Advantage web hosting plan is an excellent value and ranks among the best we have ever used. Highly Recommend for anyone looking to host a small business website, e-commerce store or a blog!

Visit Netfirms.com

HostGator Reviews

HostGator has been in the business of web hosting for many years now, and it had in fact made a name amongst the netizens as a reliable web hosing service provider. This is something remarkable as they had said NO to Windows and offers only Linux hosting.

HostGator’s major plus is its different hosting plans that are tailor made – with an assortment of features - to suit the customer’s requirements and purposes. For example, HostGator’s Swamp and Baby packages permit unlimited domains add ons, and it has gone down well with many clients who have more than one website in their names. Also offered by the HostGator are various competitive reseller hosting plans and dedicated servers for those high traffic websites, mainly online business websites or portals.

The pricing of plans is reasonable – even though some competitors like godaddy has a bit cheaper plans – given the performance, robustness, and reliability of HostGator servers, and the customer support its team provides after the website has been hosted. HostGator offers 24/7 customer support through telephone, email, and in certain cases, in person.
Another issue that many clients face after hosting their websites in a server is the ease with which they could manipulate or manage them – making changes to design etc – later. The fact that HostGator had taken this aspect seriously is quite evident from their CPanel 10 control panel that is not only user friendly, but also devoid of complexity and easy to follow even for novices who don’t know much about web hosting or websites.

A detailed demo of how to use the CPanel 10 is given in the HostGator home page.

Finally, HostGator’s supports PHP4 & 5, SSH, Cron jobs, Python, Ruby On Rails, Perl, Image Magick, Curl, MySQL 4+, GD etc, meaning that virtually all types of websites can reliably hosted on its servers. HostGator’s other offers include Instant Backups for selected plans, 99.99% uptime for all plans, 30 day money back guarantee, POP3 Accounts, web mail, spam assassin, free of cost server management and individual control panel for dedicated hosting, and host of OS – such as Red Hat Linux 9.0, CentOS, RHEL3, RHEL4, or FreeBSD – to choose from depending on the client requirements.

Apart from these things, HostGator also offers free tutorials, knowledge base, ticket system, blog, and an online community to discuss their issues, and share their experiences in an open and interactive environment. For more info, see http://hostgator.com.

Dotster Reviews

The Dotster, Inc. is a Windows web hosting company that has its headquarters in Vancouver, Washington and it is today the premier name as far as domain name registrars is concerned and it can proudly say that it is one of the largest such companies having over three million domain holdings under its management. In addition, it also services many hundred thousands of customers spread all across the globe. With so much business coming its way, the company is bent on providing many innovations and their Internet solutions are both reliable as well as simple and customers won’t have anything to complain about, and if complaints do arise, then the company has excellent customer support which is provided on a personalized basis.

A good example of such service is the fact that one of its customers named Brian actually won the 2007 Dotster Sweepstakes and walked away with a brand new convertible 2007 Corvette, which was delivered at his doorstep by this amazing Windows web hosting company. And, for the less fortunate customers, Dotster, Inc. gave away other prizes including many Dotster T-shirts that the runners-up received at their homes.

In fact, Dotster, Inc. that is among the largest ICANN accredited domain registration as well as web hosting companies in the world has expanded its Custom Site Web site design services and is now including .MOBI web sites as well. This is a welcome event because .MOBI web sites have their own restrictions as far as designing the web site is concerned, and Dotster is well equipped to handle these issues and that too at affordable prices so that customers can take advantage of this expertise with regard to .MOBI domain adaptations.

At Dotster, Inc., you won’t need to pay more than six dollars per month for web hosting services and that gets you five thousand mega bytes of storage as well as two hundred fifty giga bytes as far as file transfer is concerned. Another useful feature offered by this Windows web hosting company is its ability to block out viruses from gaining entry to customer inboxes and it also provides server side spam filtration. With a good money back guarantee scheme, you can always give this Windows web hosting company a try and receive full refund in case you are not satisfied. Among the other features customers get when they choose Dotster Inc. are Apache, blog, file manager, MySQL, POP email, SSL support, guestbook, IMAP support, standard hours phone support, Web statistics and also Web-based email.

Web Hosting Types

Hosting can be FREE, SHARED or DEDICATED.

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Free Hosting

Some ISPs offer free web hosting.

Free web hosting is best suited for small sites with low traffic, like personal sites. It is not recommended for high traffic or for real business. Technical support is often limited, and technical options are few.

Very often you cannot use your own domain name at a free site. You have to use a name provided by your host like http://www.freesite.com/users/~yoursite.htm. This is hard to type, hard to remember, and not very professional.

Good:	Bad:
Low cost. It's free.	No domain names.
Good for family, hobby or personal sites.	Few, limited, or no software options.
Free email is often an option.	Limited security options.
	Limited or no database support.
	Limited technical support.

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Shared (Virtual) Hosting

Shared hosting is very cost effective.

With shared hosting, your web site gets its own domain name, and is hosted on a powerful server along with maybe 100 other web sites.

Shared solutions often offer multiple software solutions like e-mail, database, and different editing options. Technical support tends to be good.

Good:	Bad:
Low cost. Cost is shared with others.	Reduced security due to many sites on one server.
Good for small business and average traffic.	Restrictions on traffic volume.
Multiple software options.	Restricted database support.
Own domain name.	Restricted software support.
Good support

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Dedicated Hosting

With dedicated hosting, your web site is hosted on a dedicated server.

Dedicated hosting is the most expensive option. This option is best suited for large web sites with high traffic, and web sites that use special software.

You should expect dedicated hosting to be very powerful and secure, with almost unlimited software solutions.

Good:	Bad:
Good for large business.	Expensive.
Good for high traffic.	Requires higher skills.
Multiple domain names.
Powerful email solutions.
Powerful database support.
Strong (unlimited) software support.

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Collocated Hosting

Collocation means "co-location". Collocated hosting lets you place your own web server on the premises (locations) of a service provider.

This is pretty much the same as running your own server in your own office, only that it is located at a place better designed for it.

Most likely an ISP will have dedicated resources like high-security against fire and vandalism, regulated backup power, dedicated Internet connections and more.

Good:	Bad:
High bandwidth.	Expensive.
High up-time.	Requires higher skills.
High security.	Harder to configure and debug.
Unlimited software options.

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Your Checklist

Before you choose your web host, make sure that:

• The hosting type suits your needs
• The hosting type is cost effective
• Upgrading to a better server is possible
• If needed, upgrading to a dedicated server is possible

Before you sign up with an ISP, surf some other web sites on their servers, and try to get a good feeling about their network speed. Also compare the other sites against yours, to see if it looks like you have the same needs. Contacting some of the other customers is also a valuable option.

Thank you : w3schools.com

Meaning of Hosting

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Hosting (also known as Web site hosting, Web hosting, and Webhosting) is the business of housing, serving, and maintaining files for one or more Web sites. More important than the computer space that is provided for Web site files is the fast connection to the Internet. Most hosting services offer connections on T-carrier system lines. Typically, an individual business hosting its own site would require a similar connection and it would be expensive. Using a hosting service lets many companies share the cost of a fast Internet connection for serving files.

A number of Internet access providers, such as America Online, offer subscribers free space for a small Web site that is hosted by one of their computers. Geocities is a Web site that offers registered visitors similar free space for a Web site. While these services are free, they are also very basic.

A number of hosting companies describe their services as virtual hosting. Virtual hosting usually implies that their services will be transparent and that each Web site will have its own domain name and set of e-mail addresses. In most usages, hosting and virtual hosting are synonyms. Some hosting companies let you have your own virtual server, the appearance that you are controlling a server that is dedicated entirely to your site.

Dedicated hosting is the provision of a dedicated server machine that is dedicated to the traffic to your Web site. Only very busy sites require dedicated hosting. Many companies purchase their own servers and place them on a site that provides fast access to the Internet. This practice is called colocation.