Choosing one out of window and linux then there are a number of different choices out there but the main two are Linux and Windows web servers.

For the majority of people it will be far more important to choose a really good web host than to worry about the server-type that they implement. Microsoft developed and owns the Windows operating system. Linux is open source and generally free. This means it can often be more expensive to set up and run a Windows server. However, this fact doesn’t really affect you unless you are actually setting up a server for yourself.

The cost involved in running a server does not affect the cost of a web-hosting package as much as you may think. Despite the general opinion that Windows servers are more expensive to run, buying a Windows hosting package can often turn out to be just as cheap or even cheaper than an equivalent Linux hosting package.

Some people naturally assume that because their PC runs Windows they need to buy a Windows hosting package. so its up to you that which one you like.

All you need to do is to have a good host.If you have a large website with lots of traffic then you need advanced server technologies and services.But in case you have medium or small website then you should look over to linux which supports best to such non-bulky websites.

The moment you decide you want your site to have more complex features like members only area, e-commerce, live help and so on, then the server operating system might be important. Interactive features rely on server side programs that process your site visitor’s input and returns something intelligent.

Windows Desktop And Server Operating System:
Just because you run a windows desktop doesn’t mean you must opt for Windows web hosting. This is true vice versa. Whatever operating system you use on your desktop has little to do with your choice of hosts. As long as you understand your FTP or web publishing software, your host can be any operating system.

Website Objectives:
What is important however is you know what you want your site to do, what you want to offer on your web site. This is what will ultimately lead you to the type of hosting. As mentioned before, interactive sites usually rely on ASP, PHP or Perl type languages. Each programming language has it’s own strengths and weaknesses and sometimes one can give you something the other can’t although not very often. PHP and Perl are Linux based and ASP Windows.

If you opt to use ASP to power your web site, then you’ll want to go with Windows hosting. You might be told that ASP is available on Linux hosting packages and that is true. But bear in mind it might not work as well on Linux as they would on Windows. This is also true the other way around. While you can have PHP or Perl on a Windows web host, they weren’t developed for Windows and might not work as well. In fact, there are often disclaimers about using these languages on Windows servers.

Some hosts have successfully implemented these programming languages for the different platforms. Be very clear in this case about the scripts you want to use because server configurations for Windows can be vastly different from Linux. This might cause the script to fail or not function at it’s full potential. It’s always best to go with the operating system the language was built for.

Security:
You’ll most likely be told flatly Unix based servers have better security. Mainly because these operating systems have consistently been reliable while Windows is a big target for exploitation. Hosting wise it boils down to one thing. No matter how secure the operating system is, your site cannot be secure if your host has not configured it correctly and isn’t updated often or swiftly.

In speed and performance they both perform well. Hardware is a big factor here. Again, look to your host. Do they upgrade well ahead or do they max out the resources before doing so?

Big question is that how to reach targeted mass audience through Internet Technology than to reach large number of audience?
How to find out the customer base for a website?

Website is a mechanism to effectively reach individuals on a large scale. Reaching audiences on a large scale is good for business branding as it provides operating and marketing efficiency.

Optimized websites can bring targeted online customers and there is no limitation of messages that could be granted.

Home page provides thematic content on its own right.

This new technology VOIP has rapidly spread it’s tentacles right across the net within a very short period of time and now stands as a clear threat to the old established phone companies around the world and the world of communications and telecommunications as we knew it. In the process VOIP (voice over internet protocol) has helped change web hosting in many ways.

VOIP requires a stable and extremely reliable link and excellent service from a web host to be able to work efficiently. The fact that the corporate world has quickly embraced VOIP, saving colossal fortunes in phone company bills and associated costs has meant that only the better web hosting enterprises have benefited from the windfall.

With non-VOIP web hosting it is extremely easy to get away with shoddy and unreliable service. But with VOIP, and especially where most corporate companies require communications lines to be left open all the time, shoddy or poor quality web hosting enterprises are usually quickly identified and abandoned. We have indeed come a long way because these day’s webmasters spend fortunes in cash and time to attract traffic.

There are a couple of key things to look at when starting a hosting company. There are four major factors:

1.Site design is the first thing a prospective customer sees. Creativity into a well designed “professional” looking home page for your company. The bottom line is a new customer will not even consider you as their host if they feel you are an armature no matter how great or cheap your packages are.

2.Develop your website as a total package to its clients. Don’t just present your hosting packages and leave it at that. Offer tutorials, articles, support forums etc. These additional services not only provide additional content for you clients, but if developed correctly will bring additional traffic to your site which will potentially lead to more sales.

3.You must understand how search engines work. Over 90% of your business will likely come directly from search engine results. So it is absolutely essential to optimize your site for search engines.

4.Find your niche. The hosting business as a whole is a huge industry which is very competitive. Your best chance at success is to simply find a market and develop your business to cater to that specific niche.

You have to develop a business plan which works from all angels. If you can develop a hosting company which has a professional design, some extra content, and search engine friendly and which targets a specific niche, you will have a far greater chance at success. There are many other factors to consider but if you can master these four, everything else should fall into place.

The internet is full of web hosting offers but many popular hosts are using unscrupulous advertising to mislead their customers and set them up for problems. If you are looking for a host for your web site the biggest hosting myths and how to avoid common mistakes. Myth 1: Unlimited bandwidth will solve everything

Bandwidth is the amount of information sent out to people on the internet; the more traffic your web site gets the more bandwidth it uses. Bandwidth costs money, so how much you pay for hosting depends on how much traffic you need to handle.

Your web page files are stored on a special computer called a server, which sends information out over the internet. Like all computers, the server has limits; it can only handle a certain amount of work. Give it too much traffic to handle and it will slow down and become unreliable.

Your actual maximum bandwidth might be quite low indeed. You’ll be sharing your server with many other accounts. If your account starts using too many resources, it’s very likely that you’ll be suspended or forced to upgrade to a much more expensive plan. So much for “unlimited” hosting!

Since offering unlimited bandwidth hosting is such a blatant misrepresentation, it’s not a good idea to use such hosts, regardless of how much traffic or disk space your site uses. If their business model depends on deception, can you trust them with your web pages? Even if your own site is small, other customers on your server may try to take advantage of the supposedly unlimited bandwidth and cause problems.

The main downside to selecting a free web hosting service is the advertisements and pop-ups that are non stop. Also your URL will have their company name in it,

Free web hosting services allow a lower bandwidth then paid hosts. Sometimes free web hosting sites have been known to change their terms & conditions, or even cancel their free hosts and force you to either pay them or lose your site. The free host controls everything you and your website does, and this isn\’t good.

If you are planning on using your website as a person site for family and friends, then a free web hosting is sufficient. However if you are using your website for business purposes, then it is highly recommended you invest in a paid web hosting service.

There is only one downside to paid hosting, they cost you money. However there are many upsides included in this investment. With paid hosting you host your own domain, so if you change the web hosting service in the future you can easily transfer the domain to your new provider with out any loss of traffic.

Paid hosting services usually offer 24/7 customer support through email, live-chat, or toll-free phone support. With paid hosting you are generally offered enough disk space and bandwidth.

Overselling is a big trend in the web-hosting world at the moment. It’s an easy way to get more out of your servers than normally is possible. The basic idea of overselling is that the majority of your clients are only going to use a fraction of the resources allocated to them so there’s going to be a lot of wasted bandwidth and space. Overselling involves taking a gamble and selling more than you can handle assuming that the unused resources will cover it.

The advantage of overselling for the host is that they make more money off each server than they otherwise normally would be able to. The advantage for the client is that this extra revenue is usually transferred on by cheaper hosting packages with more features. The problem is that these features are often ‘smoke and mirrors’. A few users would be able to use their entire allotment without any trouble, but if every single client were to build their website up to maximum capacity the host wouldn’t be able to handle the sudden increase in demand without adding extra hard drives, buying more bandwidth, or perhaps even another server. This would most likely lead to a fair amount of downtime.

Web hosts aren’t going to advertise the fact that they oversell. It’s not something that will gain them customers and it’s likely to drive away a few. They’re likely to get away with it without any real problems. The reason the idea even exists is that it is true that the majority of websites don’t use all of the space that’s allocated to them. The problem is that it’s not a particularly honest way of dealing with clients. It’s a little like the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ where the host is just hoping that no one notices the fact that a package is in fact a little nude.

Overselling will not be a problem unless a host gets too greedy and ends up selling much more than they could possibly provide for. On the other hand, it’s not even necessary as the host can usually make enough money to make ends meet without overselling.

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:
– no limit to the number of domains you can add.
– The possibility of hosting your main website free, without using any of the space and bandwidth in your hosting plan. If you are a reseller, your main website will be your business website, and the space and bandwidth will be reserved for your customers. If you are not a reseller and just want to manage different websites, you can designate one of your domains as your main website.
– The possibility of upgrading to another plan without any penalties or fees.
To find out how much space and bandwidth you will need, first determine how many sites you are likely to host, how many pages each site may have, and how many visits will those sites most likely have.

Choosing the right web hosting company is an important aspect in cutting your web hosting costs down. The web hosting industry, boosting several thousand web hosts, is still young and growing at a remarkable pace; hence finding the right host is not only difficult, but very time consuming; There are a few things to keep in mind when exploring; when deciding to form a partnership with the host. Below are just a few things to consider, which directly attribute to final cost.

Bandwidth — Figure out approximately how much bandwidth your web site requires. As above, ensure you get more bandwidth than your site uses.

Disk Space — Knowing how much web space your web site needs and compensating for a bit extra, for growth. As a rule of thumb, an average web site should cost you no more than $1 per 10 MB

Add On — Ask the web host if they have “Add-ons” facilities for purchasing projected extra disk space or bandwidth. But, be careful, if your web site needs only 2 GB extra bandwidth, you may have to buy an extra package in blocks of 5GB bandwidth; in this case, look for the host which will allow you to purchase extra disk space and bandwidth allowance as per your needs, this is crucial to cost savings

Caution: Ensure that you know the over-usage allowance rules; you need to know what happens if your web site uses more disk space or bandwidth than you have been allocated. The web host who informs you of possible over-usage well in advance, allowing you to take measures to reduce or budget for extra usage, is ‘worth their weight in gold’.

No. of Web Sites — If you have more than one web site, sign up an account with a web host who provides multiple domains hosted on one account; this will work out a lot cheaper than an account per website.

Databases and Scripting Support — Ensure that all the applications your web site uses (FrontPage, ASP pages, databases, cgi, PHP, etc.), are supported within the chosen account type. Find out if there are any extra fees for particular applications or associated database support.

Mail Server — Emails are the lifeblood of your online business. Ensure that you get a sufficient number of email addresses with your own domain name preferably unlimited; these are necessary for other email features like forwarders, and auto responders, etc. There is no need to pay an extra fee for use of a mail server as many hosts offer this service now for free, within the hosting plan.

Avoid Long Term Contracts — Many web hosts offer huge discounts on yearly or half yearly payments in advance, this may appear a good way to go but note how long you are locked in. If possible avoid long-term contracts until you are sure about the services and reliability offered by that particular host. Paying on a monthly basis obviously has its benefits

Savings are mostly a matter of common sense, but in this industry of high technology most people forget this rule and try to look for the best, most efficient and most expensive technical programs and software to save them a buck or two. As in most businesses good cost effective groundwork is the best start to cutting costs.