Apart from ensuring that the content on your web site is perfect and light, it is supremely crucial to know understand the importance of a good web host because more often than not, it will be deciding how well your site serves its purpose.

MINIMAL DOWN TIME

A good web host makes sure that the down time of your web site is as minimal as possible. Why is having a down time a bad thing? The world is round and even though you spend 8 hours sleeping a day, there is some one some where at every point of time who is awake. So if your web host does not give minimal down time, you are probably missing out on important clients who might think that the site’s taken down or just simply develop a bad attitude towards it.

SEARCH ENGINE REPERCUSSIONS

In most cases, your web site waits to be discovered and that happens through search engine giants like Yahoo®, Google® and MSN. Now if your web hosting services aren’t good, the search engines interpret this as a reflection on your web content and tend to give you lesser credit, thereby pushing your site lower in the search rankings. In a world where no one even looks at the second page of the results, that’s bad news.

FASTER LOADING OF PAGES

A good web host offers a good connection speed and makes sure that your web pages load fast. With reducing attention spans and bandwidth hogging dominating the web sphere, a slow server connection from a bad web host will repel traffic faster than you can imagine.

TARGET LOCATIONS

In addition to picking a good web host, it is crucial to make sure that they are local enough to hit the right market. A good web host allows you to host from a country of your choice, thereby improving the traffic from the concerned target region and increasing the traffic to your site.

ADAPTABILITY

While people are tempted by cheap web hosts that offer free upload space and limit you to an annoying format to display your content; or is it just third party advertisements? I’m confused. They limit your creativity. This means that your website looks annoyingly similar to just another million sites. A good web host is important because they keep up with the times and adapt along with the important technology. No one wants to read tons of text today. A good web host adapts to the changing requirements and allows you to do whatever web gymnastics you might be interested in.

]]> http://123comparecoupons.com/importance-of-a-good-webhost/feed/ 0 http://123comparecoupons.com/when-should-you-move-to-dedicated-hosting/ http://123comparecoupons.com/when-should-you-move-to-dedicated-hosting/#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:29:36 +0000 althaf http://123comparecoupons.com/?p=42

TIRED OF SHARING WITH OTHERS? WISH TO HAVE SOMETHING ALL FOR YOURSELF? NOW YOU CAN… BY SIMPLY CHANGING YOUR INTERNET HOSTING SERVICES. HERE ARE SOME OF THE REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER MOVING ONTO DEDICATED HOSTING SERVICES…

NO SHARING!

A kind of internet hosting, dedicated hosting is where a web-hosting provider gives a server for rent to a client. This server is completely exclusive, meaning that the client does not have to share it with any one else. It is owned solely by the provider. It will belong only to you and you alone.

EXTRA PERKS

Who doesn’t like receiving perks? The fact that the only the client will be using the server provides another advantage; the operator is able to afford complete control of everything. In some cases, the hosting company evens provides server administration as an additional service. There is also an additional benefit… that is potential for having much better security. Let us look at this benefit more.

WANT BETTER SECURITY?

Extreme measure for security are used by dedicated hosting, as a means of ensuring that the data is quite safely stored. Various software programs, will be utilized by the provider, in order to scan networks for hackers, spammers, invaders, crashers etc.

OPTIONS

Within the class of dedicated hosting itself, there are two categories: managed servers and unmanaged servers.

Managed Servers

As the name suggests, the first type, i.e. managed servers, are those where the provider who is hosting offers to help the client, with respect to maintenance of the server. The merits of using managed servers, is that varying levels of server support are provided, such as technical support, antivirus updates, disaster recover, backups and restoration, etc. These could prove to be extremely beneficial to the client. Also, any problems experienced by the client with regard to operation are resolved by the service provider.

Unmanaged Servers

Considered the opposite of managed servers, this category of dedicated hosting is one, where the operator has total freedom, and is in complete charge. The maintenance of the full server is done by the operator alone. In other words, the hosting provider generally does not provide any kind of assistance. Customers have to provide the security, upgrades etc. However, there is one exception, i.e. replacements of hardware are considered the responsibility of the hosting provider.

IN SHORT, DEDICATED HOSTING IS PERFECT FOR THOSE WHO WISH FOR EXCLUSIVE SERVERS, SUPERIOR SECURITY, AND ADDED BENEFITS.

It’s no picnic when it comes to choosing a good web host and knowing how to do it right is of the utmost importance. There is no hard and fast rule that helps you be critically accurate about what service qualifies as a superlative. There are, however, a few pointers that help in making the right choices are as follows…

NO Advertising

The one thing that people can not stand is a site with too many advertisements. There shabby, distractive and simply eat up on the bandwidth. A good web host will minimize and if possible eradicate the use of advertisements.

Upload Space

The next thing you my want to look into would be the space you’re offered. If you’re just looking to post text on your site, getting a web host that offers you 500 MB of upload space is simply overkill. But if you’re looking for an online portfolio for your photography, a typical 5 MB plan would be plain stupid.

Flexibility

Given the pace at which technology’s advancing, it is only likely that you would want to upgrade your site’s content from time to time; throw in some flash content today or move over to a PHP format tomorrow. A good web host allows the user to be able to choose how he/she can handle the data on his/her website without facing too many restrictions.

Reliability

Once you’re up and running, it seems all good until one fine day you realize that your site just isn’t accessible. The server’s down?! A good web host wouldn’t do that to you. While there is every possibility for any web host to crash temporarily (Google’s servers were down just 2 days ago!), a good web host minimizes the risk to a number where it hardly registers.

Bandwidth Allotment

Some free web hosts have restrictions on how much bandwidth they offer you. In case you are looking to reach a larger audience, it would be a bad idea to go ahead with a web host that allows you only a hundred clicks a day.

Features

Apart from the aforementioned items on the checklist, it is also supremely important to see what kinds of options your web hosting service you are provided. If your site is primarily or even secondarily interactive, you are going to want to be able to have features like an automated responder. On the other hand if you are trying to sell a product online and want to be able to carry out online transactions, you will need a secure connection- a web host that provides SSL.

On the overall, the internet today is filled with multiple options to choose from, locally and globally. So it is up to you to weigh the benefits and liabilities before you go ahead and choose a good web host for yourself even if it comes at the cost of making a small monthly or annual payment.

A control panel is an internet based application that a web host provides to you in order to allow you to be able to manage your web site content. There are generally three kinds of control panels.

1. Physical control panel

A physical control panel is used for initial program loading and related purposes.

2. Remote control panel

The remote control panel is what you are most likely to be using. A remote control panel is a control panel that enables remote access and allows a user to make changes to his or her web content from his or her PC, sitting at home or work.

3. Virtual control panel

A virtual control panel is a kind of control panel that usually serves as an alternative to remote control panel.

Control panels help you to be able to carry out a set of functions on the site data without having to personally meddle with them.

They let you access the server log(s ) to be able to monitor the traffic to your web site.

It helps you manage your FTP accounts to be able to handle the file transfers.

It helps you manage the remote database that you have established in order to run your site.

It also comes with configuration tools for your email accounts in case you want to set one up.

Some of the popular web-hosting control panels are listed below.

cPanel

cPanel happens to be the most popular web hosting control panel that is currently in use. It allows you to manage email accounts, databases, check web site statistics. It runs best on Linux and this doesn’t come even slightly as a surprise.

H-Sphere

H-sphere is another control panel that was released by Positive software. It features all the common features and is flexible as it can run on both Linux and Windows.

Plesk

The main advantage of Plesk is that its’ interface does not make you feel like a total computer nerd. The interface is a familiar windows interface. However, the feature set seems to be stolen from cPanel.

Ensim

The main advantage of Enism is that it can handle any type of website which makes it a big hit with people unsure about the nature of their website.

Direct Admin

Direct Admin handles the site data by running on Linux. The feature set is again similar to that of cPanel’s.

Of the many control panels than crawl all over the internet, cPanel is the most popular one as it proves best in terms of flexibility and performance. Neat and predictable, it is the obvious choice for anyone looking for a control panel to manage their web hosting requirements.

Getting a personal domain is going to take you down the lane of hiring a web host and that gives you two options- dedicated hosting or shared hosting. Dedicated hosting usually costs significantly more because you personally pay for the server maintenance. Whereas shared hosting is more economical as you split the server maintenance with the other people on the same server.

Minimal downtime

Since you are not on a free domain and are in stead paying for a shared hosting account, you should expect better uptimes and lesser downtime.

Reliability and Lower subscription rates as compared to dedicated hosting

You can expect greater data reliability on a shared server. This is because though you are paying significantly lower amounts in comparison to dedicated hosting, there are many more people paying for the maintenance of the shared server.

Flexible pay rates

You are not going to be handling massive traffic on the first week of setting up your website. And since shared hosting is ideal for small and medium businesses, it only makes to pay that much. But shared hosting is flexible as it can grow with your business or requirements. As and when you need to upscale your server requirements, you can request to be upgraded for a larger space on the server. Shared hosting should be appropriate and let you make flexible decisions.

Personal domain name

Though the name says shared hosting, do not be confused and expect to share your domain name too. You will have a unique domain name for your site on a shared host.

Script installation

Installation of popular scripts is easier on shared hosting as the servers are synchronized to reduce data redundancy and thereby have the popular scripts installed.

Control

A lot of people are unsure about choosing shared hosting as an option to set up a domain because they think that there will be restrictions in terms of the control they could exercise over their website. You have complete control over your website and there are various control panels that are designed to make the entire process easier for you- whether it is just uploading new content or editing the previously existing content.

Lack of super security

Being on a shared server has a few security concerns that do not come up with a dedicated server. Being on a shared server means having to share a common IP address with multiple web sites, which is a security concern that you may expect from shared hosting.

Before we start off about why hosting downtime is bad for your website, let us establish what downtime is. Hosting downtime is defined as the time a website or web page is unavailable for access or usage. Hosting downtime, without a doubt, is one of the worst things that could happen to your web site.

The repercussions of hosting downtime include:

Rating with Search Engines

Search engines like Yahoo and Google take downtime into consideration while ranking the sites on their results page. And even though downtime does not hit the user as hard today as it would do previously due Google’s constant web page caching that saves your site each time it is down, it does not mean it is not bad news. If your web site is facing considerable down time, the search engines interpret this as a sign that your web site is not reliable and/ or that you’re not focusing on the web page.

And in their endeavor to provide the user with relevant search results, your website starts shifting lower among the website rankings and stops showing up on the top of the results page.

Traffic spike loss

While your site may be maintaining a constant flow, the deciding factor that changes the traffic statistics in reality is traffic spiking. Every now and then a tiny ripple sets off and your site gets temporarily a little more popular drawing in all the traffic. Facing downtime during the spike will reduce the flow and make a public spectacle of your site when everyone on the spike interprets the hosting downtime as a sign of incompetency.

Public Perception

If it happens once, there is a chance that it will happen again. The good and bad thing about this is that people believe in it. So the moment a user encounters an error message that tells him your host is down, you are losing credibility in the public eye- which is the exact opposite of the intention with which you put up the site in the first place.

User Inconvenience

In case your web site is dependent on dynamic multi user interaction, hosting downtime is probably your worst nightmare. Apart from the obvious fact that hosting down time will directly bring the purpose of your site to a stand still, the long term implications of this would be loss of users and thereby, traffic.

IF YOU ARE IN THE INTERNET BUSINESS, THEN THERE IS AN IMPORTANT DECISION THAT MUST BE MADE: SELECTING THE MOST APPROPRIATE HOSTING.

BOTH SHARED AND DEDICATED HOSTING ARE TYPES OF INTERNET HOSTING SERVICES. LET US LOOK AT HOW THEY DIFFER FROM ONE ANOTHER.

BASIC DIFFERENCE

In shared hosting, there are multiple websites that re hosted on the very same server. That is, the hard ware on the server is shared by many different websites. Whereas in the case of dedicated hosting, the provider rents a server to a single client. That client does not share that server with anyone else, it is exclusively only for him. This is the first and most basic difference between the two types of web hosting.

SECURITY

The security for shared hosting is not as good as that for dedicated hosting. This is because since the resources are shared between users, some problems in one web site can affect other web sites on the same server as well. This makes it more vulnerable to hacking, spamming etc. On the other hand, dedicated hosting has potential for better security, as the server is not shared; the client has sole control over it.

KNOWLEDGE

One does not need to have vast knowledge about web hosting., when they plan to use a shared web hosting account., as the client is not in charge of maintaining the server. In contrast, a lot of information needs to be researched before deciding to us a dedicated account; this is because once you have started using it, you alone are in charge of its entire maintenance. The provider generally does not offer the client any assistance. They are on their own.

RELIABILITY

Dedicated hosting Is extremely reliable and also provides high performance. In comparison, shared hosting is not as reliable or as efficient in performance.

COST

Shared hosting is a cheaper option, as the total cost is shared amongst many users and clients. Shared hosting is also easily available. The clients have to only pay for what they need. It is generally considered as the most economical option for hosting. In comparison, dedicated hosting is more expensive, as it is used by only one client. It is especially costly, when the client has no technical expertise for maintaining the server themselves.

THUS, IN ORDER TO MAKE THIS DECISION, ONE NEEDS TO CONSIDER VARIOUS INFLUENCING FACTORS, SUCH AS THEIR BUDGET, WORKING STYLES, PERSONAL PREFERNCES AND NEEDS ETC.

THE TERM ‘CLOUD’ HAS OFTEN BEEN USED TO DESCRIBE THE STRUCTURE OF THE INTERNET. AS OF NOW, THERE IS NO PRECISE DEFINITON FOR CLOUD HOSTING. HOWEVER, IN SIMPLE TERMS, IT REFERS TO A GROUP OF CONNECTED SERVERS THAT TOGETHER PROVIDE A WEB HOSTING SERVICE.

MEANING

For those who do not really understand technical terminology, cloud hosting is a process where a number of different servers are all connected together (forming a cloud) and the resources from all these servers in the cloud are shared. A few examples of these resources could be the processing power, hard drives, memory etc. .

BENEFITS

There are numerous benefits of cloud computing. Let us look at some of them.

Easy To Use

Cloud Hosting is really effective as well as easy to use. Some of the features that make it easier are the limited numbers of programs and inputs. You do not need to install any hard ware or soft ware. All you have to do is connect to a cloud that already possess the hard ware or soft ware that you need. Another feature that is beneficial is that it provides automatic processing option as well. As there is no longer a need to worry about the constant server updates and other computing issues, it allows one to focus their attention on other matters.

Quality Service

Unlike other servers, cloud hosting provides better services. In the case of cloud hosting, 24/7 customer support if offered by the company. Immediate response during emergency situations are also offered by them. This is because the resources of several servers are combined together. Cloud hosting is also highly automated, which means that there is no need to worry about constantly updating the software. Cloud hosting also provides with more storage, as compared to private computer systems.

Reduced Costs

Cloud hosting is paid incrementally. In other words, you only need to pay for those resources that you are using, and not for all of them. It is a metered service. This can help organizations to save their money.

Flexible and Mobile

As compared to past computing methods, cloud hosting offers much more flexibility. Another benefit is that cloud hosting has more mobility, i.e. rather than being at their desks all the time, employees can gain access to the information from wherever they are.

CLOUD HOSTING IS LESS EXPENSIVE AND POSSESS MORE PROCESSING POWER. IT IS MOST BENEFICIAL FOR THOSE WHO WISH FOR HIGH AMOUNT OF CONTROL WHILE HOSTING.

Hostgator webhosting service is probably one of the best web hosting service out there. I was considering getting a personal domain for a long time. I was tired of being bound by the standard blogspot blogging formats that just kept interfering with my creativity. It felt like being caged in a shell. Talk about claustrophobia! Hostgator changed that.

What is Hostgator?

Hostgator is a web hosting company that is really easy to deal with and is unbelievably affordable. Who said quality meant spending a gazillion dollars and being pretentious? They are based in Texas. So that makes it ideal for your web management as they directly understand the local needs.

Features

As far as disk space is concerned, Hostgator’s hardly a problem coz they offer unlimited disk space. So whether you’re just maintaining a text based website or if you want to throw in a lot of heavy media, it suits your requirements. It also offers unlimited bandwidth as opposed to some web hosting service providers that limit the number of visitors or the amount of data you can share within a stipulated time period.

Getting started is easy on Hostgator as they have thousands of free site templates that are designed to suit your requirements, whether you’re looking for a blog, a portfolio, a photography site or just a news site. They also have a very user friendly control panel that helps you edit your website content in a jiffy. You can kiss goodbye to hours of html coding.

Technical Performance

Hostgator performs extremely well on a technical level. They offer you dedicated servers if you want it. Their uptime rate is amazing and stands at 99.9%. With so many sites that are running, giving 99.9% uptime is unbelievable. They have a 24 x 7 technical support working all round the year whether it is the fourth of July, Christmas or Hanukah.

Transferring Data

Hostgator is very easy and offers extremely easy and smooth transfer of complete web site content in case you’re shifting to Hostgator from another web host in stead of having to start building your site from scratch. And even if that is what you want to do, their site builder application.

Credits & Acknowledgement

Hostgator turns out to be one of the most consistently awarded and appreciated web hosting service providers out there. Having won the 2011 best free website transfer service, 2011 best small business hosting, 2011 code of conduct award, 2011 best reseller web hosting and 2011 Findmyhost editor’s choice award just to name a few, Hostgator truly seems to impress at every turn and their webhosting service is unquestionably good!