Web Hosting asked:


Looking at the cost involved ranging from $150 – $1000 per month why is that dedicated web hosting such a huge punch on the business web hosting market? Is paid web hosting worth it?

Now what is dedicated web hosting? Dedicated web hosting is having one single server rented to a single customer by the webhosting provider. Virtual dedicated servers and co-location web hosting are two similar solutions relatively familiar in the web hosting industry. In virtual dedicated server hosting plans one does not get an entire computer just for oneself this means that the virtual server shares the resources of a web server computer with other customers of the web hosting provider. There are many similarities between both Co-locating web hosting and virtual dedicated servers but the main difference is that, in co-locating web hosting the customer owns the web server computer and web-hosting provider only houses the web server computer and sells bandwidth to the customer whereas in dedicated web hosting the web server computer belongs to the web-hosting provider and is only rented by the customer.

When single web server is rented to a single customer it is called real dedicated web hosting.

For businesses that work with high traffic, dedicated web hosting is the idyllic way out. Application required for its operation and functionalities of web site falls under ones specific control.

There are many advantages of dedicated webhosting:

• Concerns regarding the maintenance, the security, and the reliability of ones web server are all handled by hosting provider.

• One doesn’t have to bother about maintaining the hardware and the connectivity of the computer as it is on rent and not been purchased

• One is freed from replacing the component or solving the problem, as everything is provider’s responsibility

• One gets compensations as part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) by most o f the web hosting providers.

• In the occurrence of failure one may get reimbursement with the cost of ones hosting plan for a month or a fraction of it, depending upon the severity of the failure.

• When compared to having to pay for the component and for the technical support required for actually replacing the component, while web site in not online all these advantages seems quiet good as at the day end one will just be paying for functional hardware.

Imagine the business with all the resources being saved on the above maintenance issues. One can choose between “managed” or “unmanaged” service levels as the costs of administering and maintaining the web server one has taken on rent will vary depending upon the web hosting provider.

One can choose “managed” dedicated hosting which means one will have access to “control panel” if one is uncomfortable with the technical expertise required by the management of a web server computer. All the essential tasks required to be performed by the proper functioning of ones web server via a simply point-and-click user-friendly interface are allowed by control panel.

This way one can setup, administer and maintain all the web sites on web server without knowing or typing any command lines nor having any in depth knowledge of the operating system.

Those with great degree of technical expertise in mastering a root access to the server can go for “unmanaged” option. “Unmanaged” option offers complete server administration, thus having possibility of configuring every service on the web server. But if necessary services are not configured properly it may result in failure of system. Due to these reasons unmanaged dedicated hosting is recommended for only people having solid server administration background or for web developers who require custom applications for their web sites, or a customized environment. Thus people having dedicated server computer’s stability will not be prone to the plagues affecting shared web hosting solutions.

Imagine-

-errors in programming usually made by the beginners,

- Or overload i.e. server being crowded with applications and components required by the other customers

- Or in a shared web server when the processor time and the installed memory are both shared by the software applications needed by the other users.

Instant support is provided to its customers when required by the dedicated web hosting whether managed or unmanaged which is not possible on a shared hosting plans where one will be facing delays and possible additional technical support fees.

If one is having prompt support service from ones side then the customers will be happy and at the same time there will be growth in business. For those doing business in web designing advantage to have his own dedicated server is priceless not because he will be able to offer pure hosting services, but because he will able to offer them packaged with the web design activity also. When one is having access to web server for 24 hours, then within minutes one can modify a website for a customer or upload a new one.

If complete web presence solution, design and hosting, is offered by the studio to a customer there is chance of that customer being regular this is an added advantage.

The benefits of a good dedicated web hosting are:-

• Businesses solutions being translated into sales growth

• Better customer relationship results to improved company image

• Reduced cost compared with in-house web hosting solution, and so on.

• One can run a better business and better business gives good profit.

Web Hosting asked:


Web hosting may be defined as renting space on a web server in its simplest form. One should keep in mind that a website is a collection of files linked together by HTML code to display text and graphics on a computer. However website is not complete here until and unless it is displayed on the net. To make it visible for the world it has to be housed on a computer somewhere that has access to the Internet. This is not possible by just a computer rather special device is required termed as web server. A web server may be defined as a computer set up with special software that allows it to receive requests from the internet for the website files it has stored on it and to send those files out over the internet so that the requesting computer can display them.

Web server in addition to making site visible performs several other functions as well like it provides the ability to create email addresses based on one’s domain name and even helps in sending and receiving emails with them. There are several types of software installed on the web server that allows one’s website to run programs, create and manage databases, display video, etc. One must note that almost any type of computer can function as a web server, but it’s the software that’s on it that makes it a server.

When one goes buying a web hosting, the monthly fees to be paid includes cost for maintenance and upgrading of the server’s hardware and software, the cost of keeping it online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in a secure data center with a fast and powerful internet connection, and cost of professional proving these services. It is surprising to know that it is possible to turn one’s home or office computer into a web server if one really desires, but it is just not economical. Therefore it is better to outsource it. There are several kinds of web hosting available which are discussed below:

Kinds of web hosting:

Shared Hosting – Through a shared server one can save a high amount. If one talks about the drawbacks then Spamming and blacklisting from different search engines are the key problems. Such problems arise due to the reason that several sites are assign to one particular IP address. One should demand for a separate IP address for his/her website (on additional monthly charges) to secure the user from such problems.

Dedicated Hosting –Dedicated servers are best for big, highly trafficked websites, which will require large amounts of server resources to run. One of the downsides to shared hosting is that the server’s resources are divided across all the sites it’s hosting and answering page requests for. If you are in a dedicated environment you can better monitor your server resources. The downside is that dedicated servers will run you generally $50 per month or more. Shared hosting can be purchased for as little as 5$ a month. Most small or medium sized businesses will have neither the website size or bandwidth requirements to make dedicated servers cost effective.

Server Co-Location – If one wants to have full control over every aspect of his/her web server, he/she might very well choose to buy one and maintain it himself/herself if he/she is having sufficient knowledge. Still there are possibilities that one is not having enough resources to keep his/her server completely safe from power outages, roof leaks, thieves, unwary employees and other problems and in addition it is not possible for him/her to keep it on the internet on a fast, high-bandwidth connection through out. Thus he/she needs a data center to provide those services for him/her.

Co-location is the center providing facilities like physical security on rental, continuous electrical power and a fast, reliable Internet connection for a server that one owns. However, the data center is not responsible for any of the hardware or software maintenance of a co-located server, rather user his/her self. Thus it is a cheaper alternative to dedicated hosting if one is having the necessary expertise and time to run a web server by own.

There are several web hosts offering UNIX hosting and Windows hosting.

UNIX Hosting

There are several web servers in the world running mostly on UNIX. UNIX is an operating system originally developed for servers and networking. Till now many different versions of UNIX have been written by programmers around the world under the open-source protocol, which means that the code for the operating system is openly available so as to enable programmers to customize and make improvements when and where necessary. The two most popular forms of UNIX are Linux and BSD that comes in several varieties, like Red Hat Linux, Debian, SuSE, and FreeBSD. The best part of UNIX is most of above mentioned versions can be obtained free of cost, making UNIX hosting cheaper for a web host in comparison to other operating systems. Other plus points of UNIX are that UNIX hosting platforms are generally considered to be stable, secure, powerful and fast. That is the reason why most web programming applications can be performed by software that is available for a UNIX platform.

Windows Hosting

Another very popular operating system developed by Microsoft is Windows operating system, Windows Server 2003. Like every thing useful it is having price and can be obtained by purchasing a license, which in turn increases the cost of operation for the web host and usually results in higher hosting prices. This is considered a negative point as compared to UNIX. Plus points of Windows include it is mainly user friendly however it is generally considered to be less powerful and secure than UNIX for operating in a network environment. There are several scripting languages like ASP, ASP.NET, and Cold Fusion, which will only run on a Windows server, as will the Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Access database programs. Thus the above are some of the most popular scripts for certain web programming applications, and if one is thinking of using them while building his/her site, he/she will first definitely need to find a Windows host.

Before searching for a web host, it is essential to know some important terms used in hosting. They are discussed as under:

Storage or Disk space –As one’s website is a collection of files being offered on the Internet for viewing, it is necessary for storing them somewhere for retrieval and take up space. For each and every web server there is a limited amount of hard disk memory, which is divided up and offered to hosting customers. Different package levels are there, so as to enable to pay more for more space and vice versa divide specifically that space up. If one’s website expands its space then the user needs to buy extra space from the web host.

Bandwidth or Data Transfer –One of the crucial parts to verify is bandwidth. There are several sites, which loose their host due to excessive downloads causing budget going beyond their expectations. Occasionally, host even charges in hundreds of dollars for the additional bandwidth. One should confirm about this before dealing with any of the host. Usually, ideal-hosting providers deliver initial bandwidth of 25 to 50 GB to the users.

Uptime –It is a universal truth that if one talks about perfect web servers then they are the one, which would be up, and running and offering web pages to the world round the clock, whole year. But, it is also true that web servers are mere computers, and like any other computer, they may fail or needs repairing or updating. Often web hosts gives 99% uptime guarantee, and if they fail they refund a certain portion of user’s money depending on the amount of excess downtime they experienced.

Traffic Statistics – By traffic statistics we mean those programs that track visitors to one’s website. These programs are capable of telling how many times a user visited one site, how many visitors were unique and how many came back more than once, which pages were most popular, from where the visitors came to one’s site, what search terms they used in the search engines etc. In addition they offer several types of information which are useful for marketing one’s website to a target audience. There are several web hosts offering some sort of traffic statistics software with their hosting packages.

CGI Scripts – There are several web hosts offering a variety of free CGI scripts with their packages. CGI Scripts are the things like hit counters, guest books, form mail programs, message boards, and other programs that enable one website to perform commonly desired functions. Most CGI scripts are written in common programming languages like Perl, PHP or ASP.

Thus one should take care and keep all the above points in mind while selecting a web host.

Web Hosting asked:


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.

Hosting Web asked:


With thousands of web hosting providers all around competing for one’s business, it may be confusing to find the one that’s right for one’s web site. The following are some key considerations that can help one to narrow down his/her choices to the most affordable and best options to meet one’s personal, professional or business web page needs.

What is the kind of web site that one is planning?

One’s personal web page has far different needs than one professional web page and that needs a different style of hosting than an eCommerce storefront. There are several web hosting companies offering plans sized to fit any size of style of web site. Thus selecting an appropriate plan depends upon the purpose for which one is developing his/her site.

Personal Web Page Hosting

Just like hosts there are dozens of free servers that will host your personal web pages for free, and many of them even offer most of the perks that one gets with a paid web hosting account. If one wants a personal web page without the ads, though, he/she can get a web page hosting for as little as $4.95 per month with no advertising, and with support for things like PHP and mySQL. There are many affordable web hosting packages that even register a domain name for free.

Professional Web Page Hosting

If one is setting up a web site for a professional firm, he/she will definitely want to opt for a web page hosting provider offering excellent support, free or cheap domain name registration and a good web site builder with professional looking templates to make creating one’s web site easy. If one is planning to take orders or any sort of customer information via his/her web site, then he/she will also want a web hosting provider that offers one secure server access (SSL).Thus depending on the features one opts for ,one can pay $4.95-$29.95 per month.

Business/eCommerce Web Page Hosting

If one’s business web site is more than informational web pages about his/her business, his/her web hosting package should include eCommerce software like a shopping cart, a checkout, a payment system and SSL access. Thus one needs more space and bandwidth allowance than a typical personal site. One can find many affordable eCommerce web hosting packages starting at around $14.95 per month.

Enterprise Level Web Page Hosting

Does one need space for one’s business to collaborate on projects, store information for easy retrieval and to track orders, deliveries and work hours? One requires a web hosting company that specializes in providing enterprise level web hosting solutions to large businesses. The best web hosting account should include the highest level security access to keep one’s important information secure, 24/7 customer support and tools to make access easy for all his/her employees. An affordable enterprise level packages start at around $99 per month and range upwards from there depending on the amount of customization and use that one’s web pages will obtain from it.

Web Hosting asked:


The one who wants to enter in this web world and desires for a long time survival, then he/she should be familiar with each and every terminology used in this field. If user considers all the important factors before choosing a hosting plan then only he/she will be able to have a successful future in this world .User should not choose any of the plan, rather he/she should opt the best and most suitable one and this can only be made possible by fetching more and more informations and also by studying properly all the requirements. New comers should start from the basics .They should learn the meaning of each and every term used and also in addition those factors that can affect his/her selection.

Web Host

Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as ‘web server’. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.

The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.

There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:

1. Free Hosts:

The users who are not professional but are making website only as a hobby then for them free hosting can be a good option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the user’s domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.

2. Shared Hosts:

The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility. No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.

3. Dedicated Hosts:

The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to create as many websites as they like. Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.

4. Collocated Hosts:

Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.

5. Reseller Hosts:

In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.

6. Other Hosts:

Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.

Domain Name

Domain name is the name which shows the place where one’s website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is easier than recalling the IP addresses.

Space / Storage

Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very important role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases. Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month can be easily available.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who don’t want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.

Server Type

Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.

Databases

As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.

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Server Side Scripting

Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmaster’s requirements. However PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.

Email

Now the next very important aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can move further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is planning to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts totally depends on the hosting plan one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as big plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.

Control Panel

Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some important functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.

Uptime

Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with excellent features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will think twice before visiting it. In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very important feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.

Price

Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a great variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices ranging from 0 to $1000 per month. For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterwards.