Best Web Hosting

There are several types of hosting. Among them are:

Free hosting

Free sites are for people who’s sites are small and do not expect much traffic. Personal sites about your family or hobbies are perfect for free web site hosts. I do not recommend this for any business, promoting or selling a product, or expect a lot of traffic. Usually you cannot use a domain name for your site. You must use a domain and site path provided by the company.

Virtual (or shared) hosting

A web server which shares its resources with multiple users. It’s another way of saying that multiple web sites share the resources of one server. If you do not need your own web server (i.e. your own server class computer), you will use a virtual server to host your web site.

Dedicated hosting

A more expensive type of account in which the web hosting company provides you with an entire hosting setup including your own server hardware that only you can use. This usually means a much faster loading time for your site because the entire computer is “dedicated” to running the server software. This is different from most other hosting accounts in which your web site will share space on a server with many other web sites, called a virtual server. A dedicated server makes sense for web sites that require higher availability and higher data transfer rates.

Collocation hosting

Collocation hosting offers the same benefits as dedicated hosting, except you provide the server. I only recommend this plan if you can gain physical access to the server, or have special server requirements. If you are located in New York and the server is in Seattle, it would be difficult, and expensive, for you to replace a hard drive. You can have the hosting provider repair problems, but at a premium cost.

Questions To Ask a Hosting Company Before You Start

1. How long have you been in business? Are you incorporated? Do you have your own Merchant Account?

Varies These are questions geared at stability and long term continuation of web hosting service.
These questions are important as you don’t want to sign up for a web host who will disappear in one day.

2. How many customers do you serve per server?

Depending on the Web hosting plan or the Web hosting company the server that your hosted on might be a little more packed than you might think. A responsible Web hosting company will not overstuff the servers they own or collocate. Most of the time, sharing a server with several different companies is not a bad thing though. However, you do need to ask your Web hosting company about the numbers. If you are shopping around for Web hosting, you need to ask each company about the client per server ratio. Go with the company that fits your other needs, and has the least amount of clients per Web hosting server.

3. Do you allow SMTP POP3 email to be sent and received from mydomain.com?

You should get the answer: Yes

Some hosting companies force you to send SMTP POP3 email from isp.yourdomain.com rather than yourdomain.com. They do this because they claim 1) it keeps the servers fast. However, a dedicated SMTP POP3 server won’t have any problems 2) it minimizes spam (however, spammers can still use technical tools for spamming from their account - so it really doesn’t minimize spam). The biggest problem is that some Internet Service Providers won’t allow the use of isp.yourdomain.com. It probably wouldn’t make for a good day if you discover you had to change ISPs just to send email via your domain.

4. If I go over the monthly allotted bandwidth, what are the charges for each gig?

You should get the answer: $0 to $2 a gig

Watch this one as we have seen hosts indicate “purchase additional bandwidth for $0.1 per MB.” That translates into $100 per gig.

5. Do you have any upgrades for each account, and if so, what are the costs?

Varies Most web hosts publish this information along with each hosting plan. It’s good to ask if you can’t find this information.

Other issues

1. The lame web host companies usually lack professional “look and feel” in their emails, some even taking days to respond. Worse yet, you may find some that won’t reply, forcing you to have to send another email. It pays to find out any problems in advance

2. The established web host companies reply to your email within 12 hours, if not by then, you should have at least received a courtesy email to let you know they are reviewing your questions.

3. Keep in mind that there’s much more to hosting than gigabytes and HTML, as without the professional support you need, your online business will suffer the consequences.

4. Look for an established Privacy Statement and Terms of Service. A web host without a Privacy Statement or Terms of Service is usually a red flag for you since it is very important for all web sites to establish this information to their visitors. While it can be boring to read this material, you may be in for a surprise to later find out extra charges that your site could unexpectedly incur. Know what to expect. When in doubt, ask.

5 Ask for names of two to three similar users and check with them regarding their experience.

When service at your web hosting company is lacking, or your web site grows in traffic so much that you outgrow your current account, you may find yourself needing to change hosting providers. It can be scary to think about everything you need to do. Here are some things you should keep in mind that will help make the transition to the new host much easier.

1. Backup all of your files and databases

Before you decide to transfer anything over, you need to create a backup of every file and database you have on the current hosting provider’s server. FTP into your current hosting account and copy all of the files from your public_html directory into a directory on your local hard drive that you’ll find easy to remember later.

As for the database, backup methods will vary according to the database vendor, the control panel being used by the host if any, and the operating system of the server. Most providers provide a backup utility that allows you to save a copy of the contents of all of your database tables. If there isn’t a simple backup utility available, you will need to export the contents of your database in a comma delimited file or the standard file format for the particular database you use. Most backup utilities will convert the database into one long SQL file that is then easy for any compatible database engine to reconstruct.

2. Transfering to the new server

Make sure that your website is functioning properly at the new location before you change the DNS information of your domain name. While it may not be possible to fully navigate the site without the domain name pointing to it, you can still point to some individual pages to be sure they will come up. For this though, you’ll need to use the IP address of your hosting account along with your username if you have a shared IP address. On a Cpanel server, you would enter http://61.36.149.221/~username and your main website will come up. You can use this address until the DNS information from the domain propagates throughout the web.

3. Tidy up the loose ends

Upload the backup file of your databases or execute the SQL file you generated in the backup. This should restore your database back to what it was on the old server. Change the nameserver information for your domain name. This is almost always found with the registrar that you registered your domain with or with your old web hosting provider. They almost always assign you a username and password that allows you to log into an account that allows you to change the nameservers. If you don’t have a control panel, then simply email the company that registered your domain for you and ask them to change the nameservers to the new servers. Within 24 to 48 hours, your website will be served from the new server and not the old one. Once you can confirm this, it is safe to ask the old web hosting company to delete and discontinue your old account.

ndeed, choosing a right web hosting service for your website is not an easy task especially when there are thousands of web hosting providers all offering almost identical web hosting packages. Therefore, it is important to know few major considerations even before you start your web hosting search. Below are three major criteria for web host seeker:

Web hosting features requirement

This is probably the most important consideration to start finding a host for your site. You need to decide the technical requirements for your website, this including:

a) Server platform and hardware requirements
If you plan to set up a website that uses programming environments such as Active Server Pages (ASP), Visual Basic scripts, Cold Fusion or Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL database, in this case, you will need to find a web hosting service that supports Windows platform such as Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers.

Likewise, if you plan to use programming languages such as Perl, CGI, SSI, PHP or mySQL database, then any web hosting plans that support Unix/Linux platform should be sufficient to meet your hosting requirements. Once you have these server platform and hardware requirements in mind, you can decide the best web hosting plans for your need. For more information, you can read “How to select a web server and server platform?”

b) Disk space & Bandwidth requirement
Here is another technical requirement that you need to consider before selecting a web hosting plan, i.e. disk space and bandwidth. If you intend to publish a website that does not have a lot of contents (meaning, web pages), then the disk space requirement may not be a big concern to you. In general, a disk space with 200MB to 500MB should be enough to meet your hosting requirement. In contrast, if you plan to host a website with enormous amount of graphic pictures, mp3 or video files, then you should consider a web hosting plan that provide huge disk space, for example, 500 MB to 1,000 MB.

Similarly, the bandwidth requirement will depend on your site traffic estimation. Obviously, a website that expect to attract high traffic will consume the monthly bandwidth allowance very fast. If so, you will need to find one web hosting service that offer huge bandwidth with 40 GB to 100 GB per month. Depending upon your website requirement, choosing a web hosting service that provide sufficient amount of disk space and bandwidth is crucial consideration to prevent paying extra costs in the future should you overuse the monthly disk space and bandwidth allowance.

c) Other hosting features
While the above requirements are utmost important, there are other hosting features that you have to consider too. Can web hosting provider support video clips on your website, if you have? Is the web hosting service compatible with Dreamweaver or FrontPage web authoring tool? Do you plan to set up a virtual store online? Can the host support the e-commerce features without adding extra cost to your monthly payments? On top of that, you may also want to find out the number of email accounts provided, number of FTP accounts, web statistic software (analyze your web traffic), type of control panel supported (manage your web hosting account), database and scripting languages supported and etc.

Reliability and scalability

A first-class web hosting provider offers reliable server uptime and fast Internet connection. You should only choose a web hosting service that guarantee at least 99% server uptime with high-speed Internet backbones using at least OC3 (Optical Carrier) lines (155 Megabits per second) or above instead of T1 or T3 lines. A reliable web hosting provider usually invests heavily on their data center infrastructure with high performance servers, high speed multiple backbones providers with fail-over redundancy, backup power generators and firewall software protection in place to ensure they meet the uptime guarantee specified in the terms of service.

Similarly, you should choose a web hosting service with hardware facilities that designed for scalability, so that they can grow with your business. For example, if you need to increase more disk space, bandwidth or number of mySQL databases, you should be able to upgrade as needed without any problems.

Customer service and support

The last major consideration in choosing a web hosting service is to find a web hosting providers that offers excellent customer service and support. You should always search for a web hosting provider that offers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week technical support that fielded with highly experience technicians, so that any web hosting problems will be resolved within a reasonable amount of time. You may also want to consider to test how responsive is their customer support by sending few inquiry emails to the web hosting provider. In general, any response in less than 24 hours is considered acceptable. It is a sign of poor customer support if they take more than one day to response.

In addition, a web hosting provider with excellent support should also provide multiple support channels, such as toll-free phone support, 24/7 email support, live chat, online knowledgebase, Interactive flash tutorials and FAQ.

Above are few major considerations before you choose your web hosting service. In addition, how long has the web hosting provider in business and the number of customers that they currently have are also a good indication of the quality of their hosting products as well as the stability of the company. Even though cost of the web hosting service is also important but it should not be your major consideration. Because the price of a web hosting service has been declining over the years due to competition, as a result, the price of most of the web hosting services offering quality hosting features has been converging to less than US$10 per month. If you can’t afford less than $10 per month, you probably isn’t in the online business for the long haul. Therefore, price should not be a major deciding factor.

On the other hand, it is more important to ensure the web hosting service that you choose is able to meet your website hosting requirements, guarantee your website is always accessible with satisfying speed, provide scalability to grow and expand your website as well as offer excellent customer supports. Depending on your web hosting requirement, you can take advantage of our site, Cheap Web Hosting Review to find the recommended web hosting services that can match the three major criteria above. Good luck to your search.

There are various reasons why an online business owner like you has decided to switch to a new web hosting providers. Your old web hosting provider probably has very poor technical support, or their web server is always down, or may be your old web hosting provider cannot meet your hosting requirements anymore or you could have discovered a cheaper web hosting service…and etc. Regardless of the reasons, now you have found a new web hosting service and you need to transfer your website from your current web host to the new web host. Below is the step-by-step guide that you can follow in order to achieve a painless and error free of moving to a new web hosting provider.

Transfer Schedule
Ideally, you should plan the transfer one month before you terminate your old web hosting plan in order to have sufficient time to perform a smooth transfer. Doing the transfer in less than one month time frame will put your website in risk of inaccessible.

New web hosting service registration
Now, sign-up your new web hosting service once you have decided the termination date mentioned above. Depending on your new web hosting provider, your new web hosting account usually will be set up within 24 hours.

Files Backup
While waiting for your new web hosting account to be created, it is time to backup all your web files on the old web hosting provider. In most cases, you already have all the files of your website on your local computer. However, it is still a good idea to backup all your files from the old web server. In addition to the normal HTML files, you may need to backup any script files, databases files, and even server logs files if it is necessary. You should create a directory structure that is similar to the directory structure on your web server and download the files into the respective directory.

Files uploading
Once you are notified that your new web hosting account has been created, you will receive a notification email from your new web hosting provider. In that email, it contains all the information required to set up website, this including the FTP server information. With that FTP information, you can now FTP to your new web hosting server and upload all your files. You should start by first creating the directory structures on the web server, and then upload all the files to the respective directory.

It is the time to install any script files or databases if there are used in your website. Likewise, it is a good time to set up all the email accounts through the administration panel.

Once you have finished uploading all the files and installed the script files or databases, you can now use the temporary URL to test your site. The temporary URL can be found in the notification email from your new web hosting provider.

Testing
Using the temporary URL directory, you can now test your web site online. Due to the fact that different web hosting server may require different server environment to execute. Therefore, you need to verify all the scripts (such as CGI, Perl) are working accordingly. In addition, you should test all the hyperlinks in the normal web pages if possible to ensure no broken links. While you are testing through the temporary URL directory, your website hosted on the old web hosting provider is continue operating.

Transfer domain name
Once you have finished testing your new website on the temporary URL and verified it is working perfectly. The next step is to contact your current domain name registrar (i.e. the company where you register your domain name) to change the old DNS (Domain Name Server) to point to the new DNS of your new web hosting provider. Usually, the DNS information is sent to you through email after you register successful with the new web hosting provider. Alternatively, you will be able to find the DNS information from the website of your new hosting provider.

Domain name servers control how a domain name is resolved. Typically, the domain name servers are in following format:

NS1.YOUR-NEW-WEB-HOSTING.COM
NS2.YOUR-NEW-WEB-HOSTING.COM

Some domain name registrar requires the IP addresses of the DNS. In this case you have to provide the IP addresses of your new DNS. For example:

NS1: 216.193.194.212
NS2: 216.193.207.106

Typically, it will take about 24-72 hours to get the DNS record to change and propagate through all the WHOIS servers. You can use Whois tools on the Internet such as whois.com to monitor the status of the DNS transfer. Once the transfer is completed, you will notice the change to your new DNS. Alternatively, you can make a minor modification to your home page (for example, adding a new image or symbol) and upload to the new web hosting server. When you access your home page through the normal domain name (www.your-website.com) and you notice the new home page, then you are sure that the DNS has been transferred successfully.

Final Testing
Now, your website on the new web hosting provider is officially transferred and online. You should repeat all the tests to ensure it is fully functional. Once you are confirmed the new website is working correctly, you can go ahead to terminate your old web hosting account.