Our small business website needs to be hosted on a web server or simply a server that is connected to the World Wide Web so that anyone can access our website.But how can we choose this?

Choosing a web hosting company for our small business website is easy if we follow the guide we have layout for this. Depending on the scale of our business, the type of business we run and our level of technical competency, there will always be a right hosting provider just for our business.

The general rule of choosing a web hosting provider is down to:

Excellent Customer Support

Company Stability

Robust Datacenter

Affordability

Excellent Customer Support If all things being equal, we can rate customer support as by number 1 determining factor in choosing a web hosting provider. Relying on testimonials found on the provider’s site is a common approach to assess a company’s level of customer excellence but it is also quite an old one.

The level of customer support is sometimes as easy as finding out whether they have enough employees to support their level of business growth. We should look at the Customer to Employee ratio, CE ratio, as a benchmark.

Getting As Close As we Can The other accurate way to assess the real status of its customer service is to get as close as we can to the company whenever possible via some means.

Live chat helps to know that we can have our questions answered almost immediately with a live chat function. Test it out by answering some basic questions to see its response time and also test its level of technical competency. Not critical but it’s good to have.

Number of Telephone Lines to see if there are separate telephone lines for sales, customer service and technical support. We should avoid companies who use only 1 line to serve everyone. A professional small business hosting provider should have this in place.

The real condition of any web hosting company’s customer support is really found in its members forum if any. We will get a good part of complains and praises but if the complains outnumber the compliments, it’s time to stop it.

A company’s stability can be measured by the length of time they have been in business, the number of customers company have served and are serving and lastly their financial standing.

As a business owner a web hosting company that has been around for at least 5 years would have weathered all sorts of ups and downs in the online world, and their chance of being around is much higher than a company that has been around for less than a year.

Though public listed web hosting providers have better financial transparency than the privately owned ones, they are not necessary always in a better financial shape than them. Bottom line, we would host our small business with a company that we know is growing in their customer base.

Robust Datacenter Datacenters are where the web servers are resided on, and ultimately where our webpages will be accessed from. A strong and credible small business web hosting company would have the ability to own and managed their data centers or through colocation.

If we have our domain name and we have designed a website or had a website built for us, now what. Well, of course we need hosting. A lot of people want to start a business online but are not aware of some of the basics like how people are able to view or visit our website.How can then bandwidth make such importance?

if we have already built our website, all of those files are on our computer. People who are surfing the web don’t have access to our computer, therefore cannot find our website.

Advanced users know that they can turn their computer into a server where people are actually coming to their computer to view their website, however, this is not recommended and certainly not recommended for someone who is not very advanced as a computer technician.

There are computers who are set up to be servers. These are called host computers as well to simplify things. We need to upload our website files to the hosting computer so they can make it available for others to view on the web. This is the service we call web hosting.

This is a common misunderstanding about web hosting. All web hosts are not created equal. There are many different levels of web hosting and many different plans and packages to consider. There are also many other things we have to consider when choosing a web hosting company.

A lot depends on our individual needs. Will our website have a lot of graphics and images? Will it have movies? Music downloads? Software or other downloads? Or is it a very simple and compact website that is mostly text? Do we expect a lot of traffic to our website?

The reason for all happnings questions is something called “bandwidth” or “transfer”. The amount of storage space a web hosting plan offers we is usually far less important than the amount of transfer or bandwidth the web host offers us.

Every time someone visits our webpage, every file included in that webpage is downloaded from our website to their computer. In other words, from the web host’s computer to the visitor’s computer. This includes each graphic or image on the page, every icon, even the html page itself is downloaded by a user just visiting our webpage.

Each visitor to our website is using up 65k in bandwidth every time they visit that page. Let’s also say our average visitor opens 3 pages within our website and those pages are the same size as our main page.

If suupose we multiply that 195k times the 100 visitors per day we get and we are using 19,500k or a little over 19 megabytes of transfer per day. Multiply that by 30 days and we get 585,000k or 585 megabytes of “transfer” or “bandwidth” used per month.

Now if our web hosting plan allows for more bandwidth than we think wewill need, then we know we are okay there. However, make sure we know upfront what the cost of going over our allotted bandwidth is. Some webhosts charge a lot for every megabyte we use over the limit they set for us in the plan we chose.

It’s a good idea to pick a Reseller Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, Shared Hosting plans – CPWebHosting plan that is just one step above the one we think we need to allow for growth. we might become very popular like a star overnight.

When we start our own hosting business, there are many things we will want to take into consideration. One of the most important things we will need to figure out is how we will attract customers. There are four important factors we will need to know in order to build a solid customer base with our business. If we are a reseller, we will want to know which company to buy our package from.So how we can set hosting as a successful business?

We will also need to have the skills necessary to run a Reseller Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, Shared Hosting plans – CPWebHosting business. The very first issue we will want to pay close attention to is the design of our website. This is the first thing a visitor will seen when loading our site, and we will want to leave a good impression.

If company aren’t impressed with the design of our site, they are unlikely to become a customer. Our website should have an easy navigation menu, because few people will take the time to figure out how to move around our site.

Thousands of websites use generic templates, and they all have the same look and feel. we will not be successful online if we try to blend in with everyone else. We have to find a way to stand out, and using a custom design for our site is the first step.

We want to have a professional look. It is also important to provide a variety of different hosting packages which can accomodate clients on a budget. Whether we decide to offer customer service via phone, IM, or email, make sure we respond to questions quickly. If we take more than a day, our service will appear to be poor.

If we have some money,so we don’t be afraid to invest in a tech support department. It is well worth it, and will separate our company from the thousands of other hosting services available. We should also provide tutorials on our website which will help our clients learn more how to optimize or market their sites.

If our target is clients with e-commerce sites, write articles about how they can build their business.It may be helpful to start a forum where our clients can exchange ideas or information.

Forum based strategy is good because this could function as a kind of tech support where clients answer each others questions and problems. At the same time, if we start a forum it is critical that we provide excellent service. If wemake an error with a client, it won’t be long before many of our other customers learn about it.

In our quest for choosing a front page web hosting company, we want to ensure that the company has the basics, such as reliability.so what are these questions can be?

We also need to consider the technical aspects of front page web hosting and the obligations of our web host, both are essential if we want to avoid future problems. Technical trouble is the last thing we need, especially when our company is a startup. We should ask questions freely to gain confidence in any front page web hosting company that we are considering.

The questions can be:
How good and reliable is the customer support? 24/7 support is a must. Also, if the front page web hosting company has a large knowledgebase, do we know how to use it? Is the support staff responsive?

Are the company trained or do they pass the buck to someone else? Does the front page web hosting company provide live chat support ?

How will we justify the price? Loads of features in a front page web hosting company may not be useful to us until we use them. How will we factor in bandwidth cost? Is the ratio of price to features, disc space and bandwidth the reasonable?

How will we ensure accuracy of automatic billing? Some front page web hosting companies have servers that trigger automatic billing even after we cancel our account with them. Do they confirm the stoppage of automatic billing when we cancel our account?

How long has the front page web hosting company been in business? This reveals many things. Trustworthiness, sustainability, technical know how, strong marketing and business acumen.

Do we have a sufficient back up system? It is difficult to manage 99.9% uptime without sufficient backup system for servers and connections. A standby power supply is another important feature of a reliable front page web hosting company.

if a web host offers ASP technology, they say it’s an ASP hosting company. With that in mind, in this two part series we’ve laid out many of the most common types of web hosting services we’ll read about in the web hosting reviews we peruse.
So what is hosting reviews?

If the web hosting review mentions Java Hosting, it refers to one of the most widely used and widely recognized programming languages, the use of which practically assures we that our website will be understood by any computer in the world.

Java is a simple, versatile, cross-platform, tag-based language that lets we build all sorts of things: bit maps and vector graphics; server-side applications for forums and forms, online polls and stores; improved database, email, PDF, XML, and Microsoft Office functionality and more.

If the web hosting review mentions MySQL Hosting, it’s referring to one of the most widely used and recognized databases on the internet. If our web presence is going to be a database-heavy operation, consider a MySQL hosting provider. we’ll get extra support for adding, accessing, editing, and processing data in your many MySQL databases.

Web hosting reviews for MySQL hosting providers should mention the number of databases offered, the ease-of-use of the interface you’ll be using day in and day out, CRON support for automating routine tasks, and PHP support since PHP and MySQL go hand in hand.

If the web hosting review mentions PHP Hosting, it refers to a server-side scripting language that is commonly used in conjunction with MySQL databases. It is an open-source language and as such can be altered and amended in any way we see fit.

As such, there are tons of free, prewritten PHP scripts all over the internet for our convenience. Because PHP is a server-side language, it is cross-platform . And since PHP is a server-side language, if we plan to use it in running our dynamic, interactive, database driven website,we must go with a PHP hosting provider.

If the web hosting review mentions SSH Hosting, it refers to Secure Shell, a Linux-based protocol that gives users remote terminal access to their computer systems, meaning that administrators can perform private, confidential administrative tasks on their server tasks.

If I am going for shopping a host on the server then how can I make it happy?

When we look at hosts, everything seems to take a different way. We seem to look at price first without regard to the other areas of service being provided.

Apart of the correct price ranges, we then look at the services offered. Once this list has been created we can look at other sites on the server and run the trace routes to check for speed and reliability.

The majority seems content to hand the host their credit card once they have made the following:
* Price
* Options
* Speed
* Reliability

More of the time the issue of tech support will not be considered until after the site owner has had at least three separate occasions where they have had a question that were failed to be answered by the host. Reliability is a volatile situation.

The same host that had been up for three months straight can easily be put into overdrive on the fourth month leaving them even down for any number of minutes, hours, days, or weeks, depending on their upgrade path, if they have a path at all.

The best options seem to come and go with hosts as technology offers new things, servers are upgraded and changes are made to meet demand. Tech support seems to fall into the same category as speed and reliability.

The tech support is very important, but as the server fills up, will there be more people around to handle the questions or will it too become non-responsive? The only thing left is price, which for the most part seems to hold steady if we decided to pre-pay for a year in advance.

If we cannot truly determine which host is going to be able to suitably serve our site by price, options, speed, reliability, or tech support, etc.

Where do we as the site owner stand a chance in making the right host? The most dependable aspect of ending up with a decent host. This of course, can be a good deal.

The next step was only a matter of time, and it has now start. Host directories have started to pop up. People working to offer other site owners a place to communicate about their experiences with various hosts and support while the owners sort out the good from the bad from the ugly in web presence providers.

These directories seem to be a wonderful way to help the site owner choose a host. As of this, they seem to be doing a good job with helping to gather together a list of anywhere from twenty to thousands of hosts for the site owner to choose from.

Information about the host’s prices, options, speed, reliability, and even tech support. The issues mentioned above still remain though.

But here some question arises like What about the over ten thousand other hosts that are not in the directories? How does the directory determine what host is good and what host is not? Is there no hope for finding the right host? Or are we missing something from our criteria lists?

our web site forms the very foundation of our Internet presence, and selecting a good web hosting company is not a chore to be taken lightly.Then how can we choose a proper host?

Free Web Hosting. A few megabytes of storage space, usually no customer support at all, slow servers, can’t use our own domain name, and none of the features we’ll need to make money.

We should avoid hosting packages that will not allow us to add order forms, statistics or multiple email accounts to our website. These are necessary tools for any web master who desires to open an on line business.

The best Choice. A large of storage space, lightning fast servers, live humans to speak with in case of problems, all the features we need to make big bucks.

The choice is obvious, yet in our experience more of time online marketers aren’t using a web hosting company that allows them to take full advantage of the Internet – and they’re losing big money because of it.

Quality hardware and redundant connectivity. The speed at which our web pages load is directly proportional to our income, and there’s no such thing as a server that’s too fast.

The use of our own domain name. Most can handle the registration of our domain name for us, but the best companies are listed at Host and can normally get things done faster than we can.

Now days there is no reason to use a web host that charges access, bandwidth or hit fees not until we’re getting 50k visitors a day anyway. The best companies offer unlimited bandwidth with standard hosting packages.

We’re going to need to use CGI scripts at one time or another, so that we have our own cgi-bin directory and the ability to upload any scripts we want.

Telnet access is not absolutely required, but we should be sure comes in handy for things like debugging CGI scripts. Cron jobs allow automation of behind the scenes activities, and this feature is also quite desirable from an Internet marketing point.

Now days most quality web hosts have some type of web-based admin interface which allows us to manage our server via the web. It’s not necessary, but may come in handy for those who don’t consider themselves to be the technical type.

We’ll need access to our raw server logs in order to best analyze our web site traffic. Do not use a web host that doesn’t offer this,we should have unrestricted access to our logs.

If we plan on selling anything directly from our web site, we’ll need secure server capabilities. Look for a web host with low or no additional setup fees.

Our web host should offer full email services, including POP mailboxes, unlimited email aliases auto responders. Do not pay extra for these features.
With a good web host we shouldn’t have many problems, but if we will want a live human to speak with on the phone. Definitely insist on unlimited customer support through both email and telephone , one day we’ll be glad we did.

If our site is moved as quickly as possible, while also minimizing or eliminating the need for any site downtime. Then what steps can we follow?

If we are using FTP to move our site:
then we have to
our existing site’s IP address
our FTP user name
our FTP password
If we are using FrontPage to move our site:
our FrontPage user name
our FrontPage password

We have to consider also:
our domain log in details
From our new web host
If we are using FTP to move our site:
our new site’s IP address
our FTP user name
our FTP password

If we are using FrontPage to move our site:
then we can make these changes
our FrontPage user name
our FrontPage password

A list of the name servers our new site will use email. If our previous web host allowed us to receive email addressed to a user at our domain and our new web host also offers this service, we will need to create an email account on our new web host for each of the email accounts on our old web host.

The reason for making email account is because within a short period of time after we have transferred our domain, email will stop being directed to our old web host, and will instead get directed to our new web host.

If our new web host is not configured to accept mail at the same addresses as our old web host, the email may not be able to be delivered, and will be returned to the sender.

Configuring our new email accounts in advance of transferring our domain name allows us to avoid this situation, and ensures that no mail is lost.

FTP is provided by web hosts nearly universally and we will almost certainly have FTP access to both our existing and new web hosts. FTP is perhaps the most desirable mechanism to use when moving our site because it allows us to avoid the need for any site downtime.

If we do not already have a copy of our web site on our home or office computer, the first step in moving our site is to download a copy from our existing web host.

we should have a folder on our computer containing our entire web site, and using our web browser to open any of the `html’ files contained in this folder should display the page correctly.

Once we have verified that we have a working copy of our site on our home or office computer, we are ready to upload our site to our new web host.

we now need to connect to the FTP server of your new web host, and log in using the user name and password details which they have provided.

Once we have verified that we have a working copy of our site on our home or office computer, we are ready to upload our site to our new web host. we now need to connect to the FTP server of our new web host, and log in using the user name and password details which they have provided.

The best policy is to make some study and research and then make a right choice in the first time itself, because if we have to move to another hosting service, it will cost us time and we will lose some of our valued customers due to the downtime setting up with another host.So what pitfalls we should avoid?

Choosing a web host is not as easy as it may seem.
There are few mistakes we should avoid by taking a decision for a particular host.

We don’t get trapped into all those colorful and uninvited pop ups on free web space. Avoid participating in these fallacious services. In most cases, the reason it’s free is because the company will place advertisements for other websites all over our web page.

The entire purpose of having our own web business. Something we cant say and show very proudly.We will certainly miss the full ownership.

Its sure that with all the distractions and lack of our own identity on our website will deviate our probable clients to our competitors . we never know, our competitors can boast of their strengths and get with the laurels.We know what is that.

With sites, we’ll give away more business than it would cost we to get our own domain and hosting service. Is it the ultimate solution we are looking for?

Avoid hosting packages that will not allow us to add order forms, statistics or multiple email accounts to our website. These are necessary tools for any web master who desires to open an on line business.

It’s best to choose a hosting service that offers many options such as :
* Multiple POP Email Accounts
* Dedicated Hosting
* Secure Servers
* Web Usage Statistics
* Web Space Allocation
* URL Redirection
* Auto responders

An advertisement banner is placed on our website, it’s designed to get our visitor to click out of our website and go some place else. Most free or low cost web hosting services place these banners at the very top of our web page – giving the visitor an opportunity to click out of our site before getting to the first words of our presentation.

we get our own domain name, and our own hosting, our visitors will have more confidence in our site, and will be more willing to buy our products or services. Search for a web host that offers fabulous service, affordable rates, and everything we’ll need for our on line business.

VPS is using the technology which divide one Unix sever into several separated partitions, and each partition work like a independent Unix server.Is this a virtual hosting?

The virtual hosting has it’s nature like:
Enables seamless control over our VPSs, from one partition in a single server to thousands of virtual servers across hundreds of physical servers.

The main things about virtual server is:
* we dynamically create, update and remove VPSs with shorter setup times and fewer errors.
* Includes templates for no-worry setups of new VPSs.

The robust server plays an important role:
* Makes transferring an VPS from one physical server to another machine an automated and transparent procedure.
* Facilitates rapid and accurate system rebuilds in the event of disaster recovery for improved customer response and server availability.

While the dynamic allocation is:
* Maximize server uptime and availability by letting us scale and assign resources without restarting our VPS.
* Integration with other data center application .
* Use comprehensive set of XML-based command line interfaces to access key objects.

The virtual hosting is better in a way if we are looking for self initiating business for the maximum gaining through it.