How To Host Several Websites Under One Account
March 2, 2010
If you operate several websites, each with its own domain name, signing up of separate hosting accounts can be an expensive proposition. Even if your hosting company offers the add-on domain feature (which will allow you to add different domains to the same hosting account) you will be charged a monthly fee for each domain you add, sometimes costing almost the same as your full hosting fee.
The solution is to open a reseller account. Reseller accounts were created to allow web designers to offer hosting services to their customers, to create a one-stop-shop for all their web design and hosting needs. However, you don’t need to be a reseller to buy a reseller hosting plan.
Reseller accounts are usually slightly more expensive than regular hosting accounts, but they will allow you to host different domain names without incurring in the add-on domain fees, making more efficient use of your space and bandwidth.
You want to choose a reseller account that offers:
Setting Up Your First Web Hosting Account
February 3, 2010
The Basics
Setting up a web hosting account for the first time can be confusing and frustrating for the novice. This article will guide you through the steps of setting up a new web hosting account for your website.
Setting up your web hosting account will depend upon many things, the first of which is:
Do you already have a website built and ready to be hosted?
If the answer to that question is yes, then your next set of questions should be:
How was your website designed? Did you design it yourself using Microsoft FrontPage, or did you use some other WYSIWYG website building software? Did a professional designer build your site for you? Did they use Microsoft FrontPage, or did they use some other WYSIWYG website building software? Did your designer use a database driven software, such as Cold Fusion? Maybe they coded your site using a text editor ? you’ll need the answers to these questions.
If you have a FrontPage website, you’ll need a web host who supports FrontPage. If your site was developed with Cold Fusion, you’ll need a web host who supports Cold Fusion. This also applies to other design software not mentioned here. Check with your web designer and/or web design program’s documentation for further help with this.
Business Web Hosting: Which is Right for You?
January 12, 2010
Business web hosting is what you need. You have a website you need to put online. When you look around on the internet, there are thousands of choices. How do you choose the right web hosting package for your business?
Reliable web hosting
Business web hosting must be reliable. The last thing you need to worry about is that the provider’s service becomes unavailable for long stretches of time. What kind of uptime guarantee do they provide you with? How long have they been in business?
Hosting support when you need it
What level of support does the company offer you? You may not need 24×7 service but is their support desk open reasonable hours? Beware of companies that only offer email web hosting support. Some of these companies will tell you that they only offer email hosting support in order to keep costs down. What they often don’t say is that they are doing the business part time and can’t possibly be available to answer the phone. When you need help, you may have to wait days to get service.
Ecommerce web hosting
How Much Bandwidth Does Your Web Site Need?
December 17, 2009
One of the most common concerns people have when deciding to host a web site is figuring out how much bandwidth they’ll need. Get too little bandwidth and you might be hit with overage fees or have your web site shut off altogether. Get too much and you’re paying for bandwidth that you don’t really need. The following is a helpful guide for determining the amount of bandwidth that’s right for your web site.
Every time someone views a web page or downloads a file, bandwidth ? also known as data transfer - is used. How much is used depends on the size of the page or file that is being viewed or downloaded. Essentially, the amount of bandwidth that your web site will need depends on two key factors: (1) Web site content and file size (2) Web site traffic/popularity. Let’s look at a few web site examples to get an idea of what their bandwidth requirements might be, and why.
How to Choose a Web Host - Frequently Asked Questions
November 25, 2009
In this article you’ll be provided with helpful information about how to choose a web host. There are several things to look for when choosing a reliable web host. Below, you will be provided with frequently asked questions and the answers to common questions.
Q. How reliable is the service of a web host?
Most surveys indicate that reliability is an e-businesses main concern. You should look for at least a 95 percent guarantee uptime, to ensure that the service is indeed reliable.
Q. What kind of performance can I expect?
A great hosting company has one or more T3 lines that are always connected to the Internet, not going through someone else’s network operations center. The servers should be fast, ideally Pentium Pro or Linux. You should also let your host know if you plan to use bandwidth killers such as streaming audio or video.
Q. How good is phone support?
When it comes to phone support, you should look for 24/7 phone support that’s always available with a live operator. Once you have found out, you should always check it. Call or email the technical support line at 10 o clock on Sunday night then expect it to be answered.
Q. How much will it cost me?
The entry level hosting service with a single domain name, 20 ? 30 MB (Mega Bytes) of hard drive space, email services, and up to a 1 GB (Giga Bytes) of monthly bandwidth should cost you no more than 50 dollars.
Q. How is security handled?
The passwords to your website or domain should be required to control the host as well as manage the web site. Every file on your server should also be backed up on a daily basis. You should always look for a host that offers you secure transactions as well.
Q. How much bandwidth will I need for data transfer?
Roughly estimating, 2GB of bandwidth should be perfect for a very small personal site. If you’re going to running a medium site with text and images but no large files, 5 GB would be ideal. Larger sites on the other hand, require 30 GB of bandwidth. Good hosting company’s will send you an email if you’re about to run out of bandwidth, letting you know that your site may go offline if you exceed the quota. This way, you can upgrade your plan if you choose to do so.
Q. What about a control panel?
Almost all hosting packages come with some type of control panel, enabling you to configure your hosting packages as well as your settings without having to learn the entire operating system that powers the site. Control panels can be accessed through a secure webpage, and then they will appear in your web browser. The most popular control panels are Helm, Cpanel, Hsphere, Plesk, and Ensim. The most common is Cpanel, which only runs on Linux. Most beginners and other users would be more suited to Cpanel, as it runs on the cheaper platform of Linux.
Q. What about a POP3 account?
When sending and receiving email, POP3 counts are very important. These types of accounts you can assign to individual users as their own email addresses. You’ll need enough POP3 accounts for the amount of email addresses that you wish to assign to other people. Often times this number will be quoted as being unlimited, although there are only so many email addresses that you can actually create.
Q. What about spam and viruses?
These features are classified in a separate category, and can include autoresponders, spam filters, even anti virus protection. They may be important to you, but they will actually vary from host to host. Basically, these are all free things that the host will give to you when you sign up for an account. If you’re plan doesn’t quite offer what you want, your host may be flexible when setting up your account.
Q. What about running my own online store?
If you are planning on running your own store on the internet, there will be a few factors that will be involved with that decision. First of all, you’ll need an SSL certificate for your website, so that you can process credit card transactions. Basically, these are 3rd parties that will take care of each and every transaction, for a small percent fee, eliminating the need for extra security on your server. You’ll also need to ensure that the server as well as the software is capable of running the script you have for your shopping cart.
Q. I need help making that final decision.
If you plan on having a website that you’ll be relying on for income or storing important data, you’ll need to make sure that you go with a host that will offer you a high level of customer support. A lot of hosting companies will offer forums as well as their contact numbers; however the forums can be excellent when you are dealing very small problems.
In Conclusion
By taking your time and checking to see what each host has to offer, you’ll find which service best fits your needs. There are many hosts and many different packages out there to choose from, which mean you shouldn’t go with the first one you see. Take the time to compare plans, costs, and customer service and you shouldn’t have any problems choosing a web host.
What Is Web Hosting?
October 29, 2009
The best way to explain this is by comparing it to a real-life (brick & mortar) situation. Picture a web hosting company as the owner of a shopping mall. The shopping mall owner invested a lot of money on hiring architects, constructors, engineers, etc. to build it. Now all the stores on it are empty and the owner is going to rent them to smaller businesses that can’t afford (or who simply don’t want) their own building.
As a small business owner, you can rent this store space on a per-month basis. But remember it is empty. So it will be your responsibility to decorate your store, fill it up with your own products, furniture & displays and to advertise your store to the world in order to get new customers.
The responsibility of the shopping mall owner is to keep and maintain the building in a top condition for your business to prosper. In the exact same manner, a hosting company invests a lot of money to set up high-speed connections and a full-fledged data center. And as a small business owner, you may rent virtual space on the web to set up your store and offer your products or services to the world.
Woe the Web
October 6, 2009
Finding a good and reliable web hosting company is like looking for the right husband. The word ‘right’ and ‘husband’ don’t belong together in the first place, many insists! Well, how can I argue with something to inadvertantly correct and incorrect at the same time?
So, you’ve decided to have your own website but don’t have a $3000 budget to set it up. You’ll be surprised. My first few months into this ‘freelancing’ world cause me to jump quite a couple of times. One of those times have something to do with web hosting….yeah, they wanted to charge an arm, a leg and 1/2 a kidney to set up my domain name, hosting and also setup no more than 10 pages of my website for the hosting account. Gee, thankfully I have a friend who is in the web hosting business and knew the ropes. So, I got away with a good price for my first website.
Anyway, here are a few things you should consider looking out for when you’re out web-host-hunting.
Advanced Hosting for the Mission Critical Web Presence
September 11, 2009
As companies that conduct their business online have proliferated, hosting of those websites that provide the primary point of contact for transaction of business has become highly mission critical; having these sites go offline or perform poorly not only loses revenue but also detracts from the company’s image and loses customer loyalty.
Companies such as betting and online gaming have even more stringent requirements because they need to provide a guaranteed response in near real time. Sports betting events also have the effect of crowding all the business within condensed time windows.
This level of hosting goes far beyond the simple provision of bandwidth and the quality of the server matters not only in terms of its CPU’s processing abilities, quantity of RAM and hard disk space but also the durability of its components, the power supply available and the ability of fan/s to disperse the heat generated by a server running 24/7 under possibly very heavy loads.
Is Free Hosting Really Free?
August 19, 2009
Sooner or later, as everyone finds out, nothing in this world is free. Although there are literally hundreds of Free Hosting adds surfacing on the Internet, no one can stay in business very long giving it away. So how can hosting services offer free hosting?
Easy.
One way is to make some of their money from registering your domain name. Domain registration is a necessary step for any future web site owner, (some low cost host play a numbers game between your monthly cost and your yearly domain registration fee, for example: $5/month and $30 registration fee, or $7/month and only $6 to register, or…… you get the picture).
Another way they make money is to add advertising onto your web page. They will get paid either each time the banner is shown, or each time someone clicks on the advertisement. Some will offer extra add ons like Spam or Virus Protection, Domain Theft Protection, or other services at an additional cost. Of course if you feel you have need for these services, then you should purchase them.
There are also limitations such as storage space, bandwidth, number of email accounts, and so on, in hopes that you will need more later and decide to upgrade.
Changing to a New Host? No More Worries!
July 23, 2009
John’s online business is expanding. His customers are increasing day by day. However, he feels very frustrated at the moment as he finds his website is ‘down’ about every 4th day. Whenever he calls up the support team of his web host, he gets the same old answer that his problem will be rectified soon. If the problems do persist it will surely hamper his business. He has been with his present hosting provider for the last year but now he feels he has to find a new web host as soon as possible because his present hosting package is also not able to meet up with his growing demands. This is not a one-off occurrence that has happened only to John, it happens with many people like him. Changing the web host might become a cumbersome task if John and other people like him don’t know the correct procedure of doing it. So, let’s have a look at the following easy and simple steps:
