Web Hosting Resources
Your designers have given you a promising website. Now your next job is to get it hosted. First timers usually fall into the trap of bad web hosting companies. You come across scores of them in every nook and corner who sound capable and promise to do their job well but the resultant is a website that does not have much of bandwidth resulting in a slow and unprofessional website, and to make it worse the customer service is poor as well. So, finding a dependable web host is really tricky. You can find them through search engines and forums but before you zero down on one, you need to check a few things about the web hosting company. Get to know about the company that are you are hiring.
Credibility of the Company
Make sure that hard-core network engineers run the company and they are on the block for at least 2 years. Avoid the companies that are run by amateurs even if they give you a cheap bargain because your ultimate aim is to put your best step forward and that is your website. You need to check their credentials thoroughly, Read the ‘About us’ page ‘Terms of service’. Also read the web host forum and reviews. Please check for the credibility of the posters as well. Check the technology used by the company and go in for the one, which has at least 95% of the uptime for most of its servers. You need to know if the company publishes its address because after all you need to be sure if the company is legitimate since you are putting your company’s future in the hands of another.
Bandwidth
There is nothing called unlimited bandwidth. If you buy the unlimited service, your host might shut you down claiming that your website has been using unfair amount of system resources. And beware bandwidth usage and system resources are two different aspects when dealing your host. Always go in for the bandwidth one or two sizes bigger because finally your aim is to grow. Initially you might need less as the traffic is poor but eventually when the traffic builds up and your site is popular you would have to grab for the entire available amount.
Space
The web host gives you a certain amount of space on its servers. The need and the usage really depend on you. If you buy 5 MB of space it is plenty for the web pages and images of most of the business websites. But you need to confirm if this includes the mail, log files etc as well. A web host that includes everything usually gives at least 15 MB space minimum. And make sure that you don’t get sold into buying space than you really need.
Dedicated vs. shared servers
The web space you rent might be shared by a number of other clients of the company you choose. This is a very common trend. This should be your proffered choice if the number of hits is less and the website you own does not have a huge traffic but if you are moderately popular and the graphics and images take time to download, then dedicated servers are the best bet. If you go in for shared hosting then check if the same server does not host any adult or red flag site because some search engines weed all the websites hosted on this kind of server and you don’t want to be weeded out.
Support
A simple and quick tool to determine the online and offline support that you may require once your site is hosted is to mail your pre sales questions to the company. The response time will tell you a lot about the dependency of the company. So before signing the contract be sure that you will get response even at 3.00 am in the morning if needed.
Lastly always think ahead of time so your intention might be to grow bigger as compared to what you predicted. So to save time and money always have enough bandwidth and space so that you can grow into it without a second thought.
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BluEnt eSolutions - your one stop destination for all your professional web related requirements catering to website design, web development, SEO, corporate training, web hosting, VoIP services, flash presentation, and other web related applications.
Tags: linux, unix web hosting, Web Hosting, web hosting providers, web hosting services, web site hostingThe Problem With Web Hosting Today
When it comes to web hosting, the quality of the bandwidth is as important (if not more important) than the hardware your site runs on. That’s because even with the fastest web server, your site will come to a crawl if it’s connected to poor quality bandwidth.
In the beginning, the Internet consisted of a single network (backbone) used by US government-funded researchers and organizations. Today, the Internet consists of more than a dozen backbones and hundreds of interconnected computer networks. These networks exchange traffic with one another primarily at two public network access points in the US — one on each coast (MAE East & MAE West).
Then the Internet grew and telecommunications companies built additional backbones to support the additional traffic. But while additional backbones provided more bandwidth, the overburdened public network access points caused major slowdowns and serious bottlenecks. To ease this congestion, backbone providers created private connections or ‘peering points,’ between their networks. This allows data to move from one network to another with much less use of the public access points.
But as Internet traffic continues to increase, private peering points are becoming more congested and backbone providers lack the financial incentive to invest money to accommodate their competitors’ traffic. When peering points are congested, data packet loss occurs, slowing downloads and decreasing the reliability of data transmissions. This may not sound like a problem, but when you consider that even a one percent packet loss can double your customer’s download time, you can see how points of congestion lead to major slowdowns in data transmission on the Internet.
The solution: Intelligent Routing Technology and ASsimilator Technology.
Intelligent Routing Technology simply means instead of routing your Web site traffic through MAE East or MAE West or peering points, your web site is directly connected to the major backbones. Nine of these backbones are considered major and carry approximately 95% of all US Internet traffic. Data from point A to point B is sent directly to its destination via the fastest and least congested path possible. This dramatically boosts your web site’s performance. Multiple routing options also virtually guarantee connectivity to the Internet, regardless of problems individual backbone providers may be experiencing. This technology also assures you of superior performance during peak traffic times by getting your data to its destination and back in the fastest, most efficient way.
ASsimilator technology is intelligent software-based systems for Internet Protocol route optimization-that selects the most direct route for your data. ASsimilator assesses the global routing tables being advertised by all of the backbone networks home to a given service point. It automatically determines exactly which Internet Protocol routes are to be optimized to which networks. ASsimilator then routes data to its intended destination backbone. A verification system allows ASsimilator to monitor the routing of data, and if routing is found to be suboptimal, adjustments may be made to further optimize routing. ASsimilator controls outbound routing to a backbone network from the service point as well as influences inbound routing from non-controlled networks.
So what does this all mean if you are looking for a company to host your website?
You need to have your website hosted by a company that uses these TWO technologies. They are BOTH necessary for the effective and efficient functioning of your website. It will bring certainty to the process of communicating on the Internet — a peace of mind that your website has the redundancy and bandwidth needed to stay online 24/7.
Additionally, it will allow your customers to receive fast, reliable and centrally managed Internet connectivity services that maximize the performance of their mission-critical Internet-based applications.
Rick Caraballo is the author of this article and the CEO of Avance Web Marketing- http://www.avancewebmarketing.com, a South Florida Web Marketing firm that provides state-of-the-art web design, e-commerce, marketing consulting services and web hosting using BOTH Intelligent Routing and ASsimilator Technologies and up to nine of the major internet backbones.
Tags: Fast Web Hosting, hosting, internet hosting, reliable web hosting, Web Hosting, website hostingHow To Change Your Web Hosting Provider - Step-By-Step Guide
Whether you are disgruntled with the level of service your current web hosting provider, or you have discovered a provider that offers you better deal, or your online business has simply outgrown your present provider, any reason is as good as any for changing your web hosting provider. The only concern is how to switch your web site from a web host to another in the right way and no or as little aggravations as possible.
The very first step in changing web hosting providers is to find one that meets all your requirements. Although you should have some experience in finding one from your last search, let’s still review the main issues when choosing one. Take a good look at the disk space and bandwidth your future plan will provide you. As you web site’s bandwidth requirements may grow in time, purchase a little more than you need and take a good look at the costs of the bandwidth for exceeding your traffic quota. Also make sure that the new web hosting provider will offer you the same tools and installed software as your previous old one. Ask the technical support if the software or scripts in the offer are already installed and configured. It would be a bad experience to find out after you have completely migrated your web site that not everything is working properly just because the not all the software in the offer comes pre-installed and you should have requested its activation. All these are very important and ensure you don’t have to go through this whole procedure of changing web hosts real soon in the future.
Sign up for the new hosting plan. It sounds obvious, but the thing you should look after is sign up for the new one while still having about two weeks until your old hosting plan expires. This will give you time to react if anything goes wrong during the migration of your web site and will smoothen the transition for your visitors or customers, your business enjoying as much continuity as possible.
Update your backup copy of your web site - you do have backups don’t you? If not this is a very good place to start with. Best thing would be to have a backup copy of your web site burned onto a compact disk CD and store this CD into a safe location. Your backup will include the entire web site: files, images, directory structure, databases.
Upload your web site to the web servers of your new web hosting provider.
Now it is testing time. Most web hosting providers will offer you the possibility to preview your web site before it goes live. Use this feature to test if your web site looks good and its functionalities are all intact on your new web server.
Continue by configuring your existing e-mail accounts on the new web server. It would be a good idea to write down the new POP3 and SMTP you will be using soon.
If you haven’t changed your web site design with this move, it will be a good idea to put mark the web pages on your new web server just o differentiate from the old one. In this way you will be able to tell when your DNS information is updated, which is the next step of migrating your web site.
It’s time to change your name server. As anxious you might be to transfer, it would be a very good thing to announce your visitors and customers about the imminent change of web hosting providers you are making and to apologize for any possible inconveniences of downtime your web site might encounter. I don’t need to tell you how important this announcement is for the overall image of your web business.
Now you can announce your registrar to change your DNS information, or if you can change it yourself, go ahead and do it.
All you have to do now is wait for the DNS information to propagate across all the DNS servers. This entire process could take as much as 72 hours to complete, but it is possible to start seeing the first results after a couple of hours.
Final step would be to update the e-mail client you are using to match the new POP3 and SMTP settings.
You have successfully changed your web hosting provider. Good luck with the new one!
Calin Indre is editor at HostPinPin (http://www.hostpinpin.com
), a Cheap Web Hosting Directory. HostPinPin.com is a resource for webmasters and consumers looking to find a web hosting company. Providing web hosting articles, tips, web hosting reviews, compare web hosting plans, free web hosting guide, free hosting quote, web hosting glossary and more.
This article may be reprinted or published without the authors consent as long as the “About” and “weblinks” are kept intact.
Tags: change hosting, how to change hosting provider, new web hosting, switch to a new host