Tag Archives: hosting

01.23.13
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Website Hosting – A quick rundown


Website hosting generally means storing information pages at a remote location (servers) from where people can access those pages over the internet. There are plenty of website hosting options and plans available in the market today. Many website hosting plans are offered free of cost and have sponsored advertisements on the hosted web pages. Such plans can be used hosting a personal website or a single page. Businesses and organizations of all sizes usually use enterprise level premium fee based web hosting plans. A typical website hosting cycle would involve the following steps:

– Creating required web pages on the local machine.
– Depending on the platform and programming language in which the pages are created, web space is acquired. For e.g. if the pages are in ASP then Windows based server should be taken, or if the pages are in JSP/PHP, Linux based server must be obtained. However, if the website comprises simple HTML pages then any type of web server would suffice.
– If the requirement of the website demands user interaction and/or some data to be stored then adequate database space should be procured.
– The amount of web hosting space that will be required to host your web pages needs to be determined. Also, it needs to be considered that the web site might grow in future and so adequate arrangements for additional web space need to be made in advance.
– After the DNS of the server location is pointed to the domain name, the locally developed web pages and other relevant files can be transferred to the remote server location using FTP (File Transfer Protocol).

Let us now look at different types of web hosting services.

– Dedicated web hosting – entire web server is owned by a single user and is provided complete rights over it.
– Shared web hosting – many users use the same web server and share the server resources.
– Reseller web hosting – the users can themselves act as web server owners and allow other users to host websites on their own space.
– Managed web hosting – the user owns the web server entirely, however, is given only limited access to resources and configurations.
– Clustered web hosting – same content is hosted on different servers. This aids in effective use of the resources.
Apart from website hosting services, there are many specialized services that cater to file hosting, blog hosting, image hosting, and many others.

01.23.13
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Web Hosting Considerations


When a company or a person decides to have an online presence or other internet based project they will use a service called web hosting. It is a service that allows organizations and individuals to post their website or web content on the internet and is often provided as part of a general internet access plan; there are many free and paid providers offering these services. Hosting companies have their respective servers and disk spaces that act as data centers; the files relating to your website are stored in there, waiting to be retrieved when someone decides to check what your site has to offer.

Initially, the majority of users decide on paying for a shared server with their hosting company. It is often a good idea to see if the company is reliable before this more costly option of a dedicated server is taken. With web hosting you get your own web space, but you do need to have a registered domain before you can use it, then you are allocated with enough storage to keep all your files for online publication. Files include web pages, images, audios, and videos, to name a few and normally, you will be provided with storage space of about 1 GB although the limit is continually rising as storage costs lessen.

Web hosting also provides the facility to have your own email address unlike those supplied by Google and Yahoo for example, this means, your e-mail address is exclusive to your website. It always looks like the user is more serious about their internet presence if they have their own email and domain name, it increases credibility. Then you have bandwidth, which refers to how much data is being transferred over the internet, this is something that many people overlook simply because they’re enamored with the low prices of hosting packages and don’t consider how quickly bandwidth is used up.

Problems will occur in the form of an inaccessible website if the bandwidth is exceeded so if the web host cannot provide the bandwidth you require you will need to use another company. If you only have a small site that does not have much on it then this probably won’t concern you but as soon as audio, video and hi-resolution images are incorporated, it becomes more of a concern. While it is possible to use your own home PC as a web host, this is not advised as the number of security issues involved will make it a risky proposition and it is far easier to pay another company for their web hosting service.

01.23.13
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Hosting Your Own Website


Hosting your own website is now very easy. If you had a plan in your mind for developing a website for your business, or your personal interest, and you executed that plan and now you want it to come to forefronts.

You can host your website through various ways, like:
1. Having you own web server is always an option, but it’s an expensive website hosting option. You need to worry about hell lot of things. Like hardware expenses, software expenses, labor expenses and server uptime. All of them need technical knowledge and expertise. Which is tough for everyone, until your plan is really big like 2. You can also take services of your Internet Service Providers (ISP), all ISP’s provides these web hosting services. You’ll get robust, reliable and effective solutions monitored by hosting experts. 3. Renting space on commercial web server is the most popular way of website hosting. Most of the websites are being hosted on these commercial web servers on shared service bases. All the space on these servers is not occupied by a single website. In fact several websites are hosted on a single server.

2. Web Space Requirements
It’s very important to know about the space requirements of your website. You can choose the best hosting package for your website, only after knowing your exact space requirements. Hosting Service Providers have several customized packages for website hosting with different kind of services. They serve high end customers as well as low budget high priority customers, so if your requirement is of 100MB web space then no need to go for 1GB until prices are too competitive.

3. Technical Issues
If you are a novice in IT field, and you are only interested in having a website for your business. In that case, you need to verify the technologies from your developers with which they are developing your website, not your Web Server must be supporting all those technologies, clarify your needs and requirements in front of Web Hosting Service Providers, they’ll tell you about compatibility. Also note one thing, service providers provide several additional facilities free of cost bundled with their hosting package like free professional E-mail Id, and Free FTP Accounts and plug-in for chat and real time integration with your website.

Don’t forget that Hosting service is one time for your website, once you have chosen a provider or you. You cannot change it for fixed time duration, and even after that it’s a complex task. So take your time and choose the best.

01.23.13
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Shared Hosting Accounts


Shared web hosting has always been the most wide-spread hosting service on the World Wide Web. Shared hosting main advantage over other types of web hosting is its affordable price. With cpwebhosting you will not just get affordable shared web hosting accounts, but comprehensive shared hosting solution with a variety of additional features without any additional fee.

If you own not very weighty website and want your websites being totally managed in order to save your time for your main business, shared hosting account from cpwebhosting.net could be an ideal solution for you. Shared hosting accounts are low cost web hosting accounts because you share one server with plenty of other websites. With cpwebhosting.net you may be rest assured that performance of your shared web hosting account is stable and around the clock as we provide all our clients with 24 hour online technical support and 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Cpwebhosting.net offers reliable, affordable and professional shared web hosting solutions to provide our clients with top-notch plans for storing information, images, video or any other content that could be accessible via the Web. At cpwebhosting.net you will find the variety of affordable shared hosting accounts. Every our shared hosting account comes with decent amount of web hosting storage and bandwidth so that you will never have any inconvenience with data transferring.

Each shared hosting account from cpwebhosting.net includes H-Sphere Cpanel that has very user-friendly interface and makes it easy to manage your website. One of our important advantages is that all our shared web hosting accounts include full support of PHP and MySQL and use stable Linux web hosting platform.

01.23.13
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To Share or Not To Share?


When looking for a hosting solution for your web site you’ll discover you have the choice of shared or dedicated hosting.

Shared hosting is what it says it is. Your web site shares a server with other web sites. You don’t have access to the other web sites files, they don’t have access to yours and you don’t share a domain name. What you do share is the machine and the scripts that are pre-installed on it. Why would you do this? Because it’s cheaper.

The cost of setting up a server machine is not inexpensive. Even relatively large web sites are only a few hundred megabytes, so today’s computers with multiple hard drives are easily able to handle the space. There can be as many as one or two hundred web sites on a shared server.

You’ll find there are different platforms available in shared hosting too. You will find Unix/Linux or Windows NT/2000 as your platform. You don’t have to choose the platform your PC is running. This has nothing to do with what the server needs to operate on. Unix platforms are very stable and are perfect if you have a site using mostly HTML pages, PHP or CGI. If you are using scripting such as Active Server Pages, have designed your web site using FrontPage, or need access to a Microsoft Access or SQL Server database, you need a Windows platform.

Shared hosting usually comes with a heap of extras and most are included in the price. You can get email, auto-responders, pre-installed scripts including counters and mail scripts, password protected directories, your own cgi-bin, and browser based control panels, secure directories and more.

However, if you need complete control of your server, you need a dedicated server. Obviously if you’re not going to share the server with anyone, it is going to be more expensive.

Dedicated servers are usually only required by experienced developers. If you’re not sure if you need a dedicated server, then you probably only need shared hosting.

01.23.13
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Is Your Web Host A Paddle Boat Or A Cruise Ship?


A paddle boat is great for fun on a day off! But would you consider taking it to the open sea? A cruise ship on the other hand is ideally suited for pampering its guests with every facility imaginable for the vacation of your dreams!

Applying this analogy to web hosting can help you make a wise decision if you are currently 1) new to internet business and looking for that first web host, or 2) up and running but thinking the time has come to upgrade to a higher level.

Web hosts fall generally into 3 categories. They are:

1) Free Services
2) Budget Hosts
3) Full Service

Let’s take a look at each category.

1.Free Services
If you want to run a home page for personal interest for family and friends, great! If you want to ease into the internet cautiously, great. Cpwebhosting.net offers a good free service with reasonable support. In short, if you merely want to paddle around, have a little fun, gain some experience, these services are fine. For serious business however you really need your own domain name, not someone else’s. Cpwebhosting takes the edge off by allowing your name to come first in the URL

2.Budget Hosts
You get what you pay for, generally. Many may knock the value of budget hosts. If you are running a serious business, then probably this kind of package would not give enough stability or features.

If you merely want to paddle account have a little fun gain some experience, these services are fine. For serious business however you really need your own domain name, not someone else’s. Cpwebhosting takes the edge off by allowing the cpwebhosting.net.

3.Full Service
If your business is taking off and you need 24 hour full support with all the ‘bells and whistles’ then this is the way to go. If your internet business is your main stay then you need a ‘cruise ship’ company who are going to give you professional top of the line facilities and service.

See if there are good shopping cart facilities so you can easily set up your online store. Managing your post office and auto responders should also be easy through a friendly interface with good web hosts.

Look for 24 hour technical support and immediate response to customer needs. Some even have a troubleshooting crack force which can give a response usually within an hour or two.

Choosing a web host or changing a web host is one of those decisions which will have a massive impact on your business. Use the 3 category test above and decide where you are going! Then decide whether to jump into a paddle boat or book yourself a ticket on a cruise ship for a happy trouble free experience.

01.23.13
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Are your Web Hosting costs too high?


To select the right web host is an important aspect in lowering your web hosting costs. To find a right web host is not a difficult task but it’s a very time consuming task. There are few things in mind while exploring and when deciding to form a partnership with the host. Below are few things to consider which directly attribute to final cost:

  • Disk Space Knowing how much web space your web site needs and compensating for a bit extra, for growth.
  • Bandwidth Figure out how much bandwidth (data transfer) your web site uses. As above, ensure you get more bandwidth than your site uses.
  • Block buying Ask the web host if they have ‘block buying’ 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.
  • Number 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.
  • Applications and databases Ensure that all the applications your web site uses 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 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. Paying on a monthly basis obviously has its benefits. If there are concerns with your service encouraging you to seek a new host elsewhere, you may lose out on many months of hosting fees when breaking a yearly or half-yearly contract; but, if the necessity arises, a loss of only a few days to close a troublesome account, is preferable.

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.

01.23.13
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Pick a Good Hosting


If you visit any web hosting provider on line they will tell you how good they really are. Some are correct and some are not. Let’s get down to the basics.

(i) Back End/Network Operations Centers
This is where your accounts are actually housed. Sometimes a hosting provider will lease a part of a larger network and sometimes a hosting provider will develop their own. It is important to find out what kinds and how many fiber optic connections the NOC has. Make sure there is plenty of redundancy built in. Make sure the NOC is managed 24/7, even on holidays. Make sure there are fire suppression systems in place. Last but not least, ask about security. Make sure there are plenty of security measures in place.

(ii) Customer Service
Are they friendly? Do they answer their telephones? Are you put on hold and if so, for how long? If you have to leave a message, do they respond quickly? Does the rep on the other end know what they are talking about? Look at their network page and see if they have reports of down time or issue statements about problems.

(iii) Technical Support
How long does it take to get questions answered and tasks performed. Send a test support message and gauge the response times.

(iv) Ticketing Systems
Do they have a ticketing system that tracks performance times. This is key. If a hosting company has this, they are serious about improving internally.

(v) Domain Names
Do they offer domain name sales? This can help to consolidate your vendor costs. See about getting a discount on domains if you are buying in bulk on a monthly basis.

(vi) Branding You
Does the hosting provider offer branded support? As you grow, you will need to expand and see if the hosting provider will set you up with your own technician in your company name. Do they offer branded control panels and name servers? You need these tools to grow. Find out how easy it is to set these features up for your own account.

(vii) Scalable Discounts
If you are growing at a rapid rate, ask for better pricing and discounts. It is ok to ask. It’s even better when you get it and will reduce your overhead.

(viii) Financial Overview
Is that particular company in the red of black? Do they have a good cash flow? How fast is the host growing and can they handle the growth? What are they doing to grow and maintain the customer service level you expect? Are they near a buy out or planning ?

01.23.13
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Web Hosts Not All Are Created Equal


Many people think that all web hosts offer the same level of service within a certain price point. This could not be further from the truth. Fundamentally web hosting is web hosting but when you compare apples to apples you will find a broad range of differences that may or may not be a detriment to your business. Below are 3 simple steps to help you determine what provider will best fit for your needs and where to find them.

1. Determine Your Price Point
Let’s face it; the bottom line is usually at the top of the list, which is price. You can spend anywhere from a few dollars a month to a few hundred depending on your needs. Only you can determine your budget and what you are willing to spend so the best bet is to choose a realistic middle ground on price and then begin shopping. A great place to start is cpwebhosting.net. This is a very well known and established web hosting company. The obvious benefit here is that your hosting reliability factor increases greatly as well as the control of your content and customization.

2. Determine Your Needs
What are your requirements from your perspective web host and what are your expectations in relation to your budget? Web hosting in general has become much more affordable and competitive but you should ask yourself some fundamental questions first. Do you require your web site to be available 24/7/365 100% all the time or can you / your business live with a modest 99.9% up-time which is normally the industry standard for a much lower price point then a higher end SLA (Service Level Agreement) from a more expensive provider. What level of support do you need or expect? Will you require 24/7/365 phone support for technical and sales assistance or will email and or ticketing system be sufficient? Another important aspect but highly overlooked is the issue of potential data loss. Make sure that the web host you choose offers back up / restore services or perhaps at least an option to ad it or make it available at an additional cost.

3. Do Your Homework
Once you have narrowed your web hosting needs and price points its time to do a little digging on your perspective providers. Your research should begin on the providers own web site. Most companies have an ‘about us’ page which may provide some relative background on company history and a summary of their products, services, and infrastructure. You should also read their privacy policy and terms of service. Never take anything for granted. You should know exactly what you’re entering into and what you can expect from your provider should problems arise.