There are a myriad of companies that offer a variety of free computer services. But, using a host service that does not charge for space may not be the best option for every person or business launching a new website. The unlimited web hosting that does not cost in rental space may cost in other areas. This is not necessarily a negative factor, but it does indicate that seekers should be completely informed about where the costs lie or what they will be expected to offer the server in return for the service. While there are plenty of hosting companies that do offer computer space and quality services at no charge, there are also companies that target those looking for freebies by taking advantage in a variety of ways. And, existing on a server that hosts other free websites can also put the computer neighborhood at risk. When served by a free hosting service, quality control may be minimum, meaning neighbors that may spam, slow up loading times, or post inappropriate materials. It will be crucial to investigate, thoroughly, every web host under consideration. Newcomers who are looking for inexpensive ways to get their websites posted online will need to understand the basics of web hosting. Getting the information about how the entire process works will help in making wise decisions about what route to choose when looking for unlimited web hosting. A web server is actually a computer that can receive petitions from the Internet to send and display files to the computer requesting information. When a site is hosted on a server, the files are stored on the server’s space. Most servers that offer unlimited web hosting will have many clients occupying one server computer and this is called shared hosting. Dedicated servers are computers that are committed to one specific client. With a shared service, clients share addresses and this can impact certain functions. Smaller sites generally utilize the shared server options, but knowing who the neighbors are will be important. There are many different reasons for using unlimited web hosting and utilizing services offered at no charge might be very appropriate and even beneficial in the right circumstances. Small companies just launching a page or site might find the perfect opportunity to get a “feel” for Internet protocol and business. Other site owners may wish to post their information pages on several different servers, experimenting with traffic demographics. Utilizing the services offered at no charge would definitely be beneficial in these cases. The Internet has become a major medium for not only businesses, but for family and friends communications, as well. Now, photographs are not sent via the mail, or even shared at family gatherings. By posting pictures online, anyone can enjoy them at anytime, and even print off copies of their own! Simple family sites are perfect clients for the unlimited web hosting services that do not charge a rental fee. Unlimited is not necessarily best in every situation, however. Maintaining a server computer costs money, and there has to be a way for these host services to pay for their own time and expenses. This means that there will generally be a “catch” involved with using unlimited web hosting services. The server may require that clients display advertising on their sites. Some agencies will not charge for rental space, but will charge for the use of a domain name, or website address. And, services are generally limited in technical support or speed when there is no charge. It will be important to carefully weigh all of these factors when selecting a server. Being hosted will most likely cost something, either in page space for advertising or in utilizing other services offered by the server. When looking for a server at free or discounted pricing, be sure and ask each server questions about who you will be sharing computer space with. It will be important to reside in a cyberspace location with reputable businesses. Site owners will never want to put their browsers at risk by exposing them to the inappropriate content of a neighbor’s pages. It will be a good idea to pray before choosing a host service. Ask God for His direction in finding a server that will support the integrity that brings glory to Him. “Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Research and investigations will equip seekers with the information needed to make the right choices. There are websites online that give quick reviews of some of the servers offering unlimited web hosting, making it easy to investigate several choices at once. It may also be a good idea to contact clients that are currently utilizing any server under consideration. Asking the clients about speed, up time, and technical support will give you a good idea of how the company serves their customers. And remember, in most cases, you get what you pay for.
January 29, 2008
WHAT IS DEDICATED WEB HOSTING?
Dedicated hosting permits individuals and business to lease pre-configured, state-of-the-art equipment and connectivity from a hosting service provider. Instead of simply sharing server space on a virtual server, dedicated hosting gives you the opportunity to lease an entire server for your own exclusive use.
Dedicated services include the lease of pre-configured equipment and connectivity from a hosting provider. The equipment and connectivity are fully managed by the hosting firm, providing its customers with a customized Web server in first-class data center facilities.
With a dedicated server, you can exercise total control over your Web presence. You can choose the operating system and software you wish to use, and individualize settings for your multimedia and e-commerce requirements. Dedicated servers are a good choice for customers that require custom software or enhanced server control but do not want to make the significant up-front investment required in purchasing a server.
Dedicated hosting is more desirable for users with more sophisticated needs, since it permits the deployment of more complex applications, as such databases, streaming media, and high-end e-mail solutions. Dedicated hosting solutions also have the ability to host multiple sites on one machine. Such solutions are usually provided on a world-class network connection, and include 24×7 monitoring of the server and network availability.
The fact that the hosting provider owns the dedicated server is a significant benefit to you because they are responsible for maintaining the equipment and the redundant connections to the Internet. If a hardware component fails, the provider is responsible for replacing it at no cost. The other advantage of dedicated service is that it is custom-designed for each customer. Advanced hosting providers will allow you select specific CPU speeds, disk space requirements and other hardware components. Such automated server specification processes maximize your return-on-investment by ensuring that you only select the hardware you need.
Dedicated servers are excellent service options since only a consumer and their visitors can access the server. This means that Web server performance and the security of e-commerce applications are enhanced.
Because of these advantages, dedicated servers can be considered a superior service allowing you access to more reliable avenues of content distribution and control over your hosting environment. With more control, however, comes more responsibility. Customers who select dedicated hosting solutions will require a certain amount of competency in IT and server administration issues in order to properly maintain the server. This will mean a greater investment of time and human resources than what a “virtual” or “shared” server requires. Furthermore, dedicated servers will require a much larger financial investment.
Dedicated servers are usually offered for a single inclusive monthly fee to Web developers, e-commerce operators and content distributors. The cost can range from between $99 to $2,500 per month, depending on budget, and the level of customer care and technical support required.
Dedicated servers are therefore considered an entry-level hosting solution for the small to medium sized enterprises.
What to Look for in Ecommerce Web Hosting
Ecommerce hosting includes all hosting services related to the exchange of goods, services, and investments online. While we usually think of ecommerce hosting as online shops where you can buy books, CDs, and computer accessories, there are many other kinds of ecommerce hosting. Ecommerce hosting plans include powerful site design software that allows you to create an online presence for your company. You can sell one product or ten thousand. The Shopping Cart — You have probably seen or used a virtual shopping cart provided by an ecommerce website. This is a program that allows you to browse and select one or more products or services from a website before proceeding to a checkout point for purchasing. This program uses cookies to remember each customer and the items in his/her shopping cart. All ecommerce hosting plans offer one or more shopping cart programs, though they vary in complexity and ease of use. Payment Gateways & Merchant Accounts — Ecommerce hosting also includes a payment gateway so that customers can purchase your goods or services from the convenience of their homes. Together with a merchant account, your customers can purchase goods or services from your site with a variety of payment options including: Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, cheque, or sometimes by telephone. A merchant account acts as an online banking account where sales revenue is stored for later transfer or withdrawal. These services can often be purchased independently of the ecommerce plan, which allows you to choose the best services for your needs. Before choosing a particular company, ensure that the shopping cart, payment gateway, and merchant account are all compatible. If they are bundled together then this will probably not be an issue. It is also important to compare merchant account/ payment gateway providers, as they have different transaction costs, application requirements and operating procedures. Secure Sockets Layer — If you will be accepting payments online you must have some form of SSL. SSL (secure sockets layer) encrypts data such as credit card numbers and addresses so that it is not visible as it passes through other computers. Without SSL all your personal information would be visible to everyone with access to the internet. If your ecommerce plan includes shared SSL, than you can use the host’s shared SSL certificate (ex. https://secure.yourhostsdomain.com/~username). Or you can opt for a private SSL certificate. With a private SSL certificate you must pay a fee and you must have a dedicated IP address (check your hosting plan details). Your private account does not include your web hosts name in the IP address (ex. https://secure.yourdomain.com). This is more expensive than a shared SSL certificate because you must pay a yearly fee to renew your private certificate. Plan Carefully — Ecommerce sites require many more considerations than regular business web sites. You should develop a detailed growth plan that enables you to choose hosting services that will grow with your site and allow your business to incorporate additional features as you see fit. It is important to choose a host that offers reliable technical support. You will likely require support in setting up your payment gateway and SSL certificate. However, you will probably also need assistance to setup your shopping cart. You will need to incorporate a database to store all of your products and customer information. This can be a daunting task made more difficult when using complicated application software. Before purchasing a hosting plan, you should first talk to a sales representative who can answer any questions. You should also ask to see/use a demo for any important software you will need (such as a shopping cart). If you don’t have an in-house web developer or are uncomfortable with the complexity of ecommerce hosting, it may be easier to choose a plan with a ready-made website that you can simply plug in your pictures and product descriptions. Again, try using the demo first. Keep in mind, ecommerce hosting requires more disk space and data transfer than regular hosting so ensure that you will have an adequate amount for the future growth of your website. You need a hosting provider that can really offer 99.9% uptime. The last thing you want is paying customers that can’t access your website. Don’t settle for the hosting provider’s glowing testimonials. Search long and hard for reliable impartial reviews. Conclusions– Ecommerce hosting provides a means of selling products and services online. When choosing a hosting plan, ensure that the shopping cart is easy to use and that your payment gateway/merchant account are compatible with your shopping cart software. Find out if your plan includes a shared SSL certificate. If not, you will have to purchase a private certificate at added expense. Importantly, make sure your plan includes enough disk space and bandwidth for your growing site and the uptime and technical support to see you through any unexpected obstacles. Reliability of the hosting provider is key, so take the time to carefully research the host(s) of your choice.
ENSURING YOUR HOST OFFERS DECENT TECHNICAL SUPPORT
It’s the role of any reliable hosting firm to take full responsibility for its hardware, software and operating environment so that webmasters can focus solely upon running their business.
If a hosting company is truly committed to this objective, their technical support must be stellar. Customer care therefore is always a major consideration before you chose a Web host.
Since it is a major loss leader, many hosting firms don’t invest in the labor and equipment required to maintain their operation. It is thus the task of wise webmasters to size up the expertise of a hosting company’s support staff before making the fateful decision concerning where to host their Web sites.
Determining whether technical support is dependable is important, because if anything goes wrong with your site, who are you going to call? In an ideal world, it would be your knowledgeable customer care representative. However, in the real world, we know that knowledgeable customer care is hard to find.
Hosting companies claim that they have technicians working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year in their operation centers maintaining mission-critical systems. While this in fact may be true, the most unqualified people in the hosting industry sometimes work in support call centers. Due to the unprecedented demand for IT professionals, many Web hosts can’t find employees that are formally trained in Operating System and network technology. Other firms allot so much money to advertising and marketing that technical support becomes a secondary priority. In both instances, customers suffer because they cannot access immediate or useful assistance. So before you select a host, make sure that you put their support to the test.
First, call up technical support and ask them to walk you through the basic routines needed to maintain your site. Ask the technical support technician whether he or she is available at the office at regular intervals. Ask the technician whether he or she went through a corporate or professional training program in order to qualify for the job. If the technician is assisting you with a Windows NT-based request, make sure to ask whether he or she has a MCSC, or Microsoft certification. Ask the support technician how long he or she has been working with the company.
Determine whether technicians are knowledgeable by listening and assessing their tone of voice. Do technicians at a certain company put you on hold often? Then they may only be employed to answer telephones or e-mail and relay support requests to someone more qualified. Also ask support technicians basic questions about where the company is located, where they are located and the company’s address. This might give you an indication if a hosting company’s support services are outsourced, or whether support representatives are working out of the firm’s server farm or head office. Ask the support representative outright whether he or she is employed on a contractual basis. Also determine how sophisticated customer tracking and billing is by asking the technician to pull information about your account.
This will give you an indication whether the company has automated systems to track technical inquiries. Further, ask the technician whether the firm provides an online “knowledge base” or “technical support center.” If the company does, make sure to inspect its support documentation to determine whether it is specific to the service.
Many hosting companies now offer technical support documentation in hard copy format. You should attempt to determine whether the hosting firm will allow you to download a PDF file with all of its documentation enclosed.
A prospective Web hosting customer should also determine whether a hosting company offers true 24-hour support by e-mailing or calling the hosting provider after hours.
These tests will give you a strong indication whether the technical support is reliable or questionable. Remember that you’ll have to trust any host you select to deliver timely and useful support on issues that can affect your income.
January 28, 2008
About Reseller Web Hosting..
Reseller web hosting is a system whereby a company buys bulk hosting at a wholesale price and then subdivides it and sells it at a markup. The reseller buys the hosting from a large data center that operates the servers. Depending on the type of reseller account, the reseller may offer the technical support and billing, or it may be performed seamlessly by the data center. Resellers may be very large companies hosting thousands of sites. They are responsible for promoting their hosting plans and supporting and billing their customers. They in turn, are supported by the original reseller. Some resellers are just small web design companies that offer hosting for their customers at a small profit. Because the reseller has fewer customers to deal with than the bulk hosting seller, they can usually offer far better service and technical support. Why become a reseller? It is far cheaper to buy a reselling package than it is to invest in a data center and your own servers and personnel. Many large web hosting companies have started off as resellers and eventually bought their own data centers. Reselling can be a profitable enterprise. For example, you can purchase reseller hosting plan offered by an established Hosting Provider for $99.95 per month. It comes with 20GB of disk space and 200GB of total bandwidth. You can resell as many accounts as you want. If you split this into 40 accounts each with 500MB of disk space and 5GB of bandwidth at $10 per account you would net (40 x $10 – $99.95) $300.05 per month before your expenses. If you hosted just 500 accounts you would net $45,000 a year before operating costs. When you consider that some of the largest hosts on the web are each hosting millions of sites, 500 does not seem like an awful lot. This is one reason why many companies are turning to reselling as a viable source of revenue. Reselling website hosting is a business opportunity that requires very little startup capital and is very scalable. Starting your own hosting company through reselling can be accomplished for less than $50/month. This includes the cost of a website template, domain name, a reseller hosting account and other needed software such as a billing system and hosting control panel. If you are a tech-minded individual with an entrepreneurial spirit, reseller hosting could be the opportunity for you. To get started, research as many web hosting companies and reseller hosting plans as you can. Don’t limit your criteria to simple statistics such as website storage, bandwidth, and price offered with each plan. See what other people have to say about the reliability and support from each company. Visit some popular hosting directories, blogs, and web hosting forums.
How to Select a Web Site Host
So, you know how to create HTML files (web pages) and want to start a website. You have a domain name but don’t know where to store the files (web host). You find countless web hosting companies offering a wide range of products but you can’t make heads or tails of all the features to decide which plan is right for you.
Does this sound like you?
If so, this article was written for you. Hopefully after reading it, you will have a better understanding of all the terms associated with web hosting and find a hosting company that is right for your business.
File Storage Space
Usually hosting companies sell different packages centered around storage space. Storage space is specified in kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), or gigabytes (GB); a megabyte is 1000 kilobytes and a gigabyte is 1000 megabytes.
How much storage space do you need? Well, that depends on what you are planning to do with your website. If you have only a few pages of text and little to no graphics or images, a 25 MB should be more than you will ever need. Most hosting packages start at 25 MB of storage space. When comparing web hosting companies for file storage space, be sure to check their terms and conditions to make sure they do not charge another setup fee for upgrading to a packge with more space.
One way to determine the size of your files in Microsoft Windows, right click the Start button and click Explore. Scroll down and select the file(s) or folder(s) you plan on using for your website. Right click on the selected file(s) or folder(s) and click Properties and you will see the size.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the measure of how much data flows through your site. It is usually expressed in GB transfered per month. If you are expecting a lot of hits (millions of page views) to your site you will need to get the most bandwidth you can afford. For new web sites it may take a while to get up to a significant bandwith. If you find you are approaching the bandwith limit, you can always upgrade to a plan with higher bandwidth. Some plans allow you to increase your monthly bandwidth for an additional monthly charge.
Most hosting plans include a significant number of POP e-mail accounts and unlimited e-mail forwarding.
POP accounts can be accessed with your current e-mail program and some hosts may include a webmail interface for your POP accounts. If you have several people that work for your web site/business and want them to have their own e-mail address, you will need to select a hosting plan with enough POP accounts.
E-mail forwarding is when e-mail that is addressed to your website gets redirected to another e-mail address that you specify. An example of e-mail forwarding: for one of my websites mail addressed to mike-@-mrgoodbeer.com, sales-@-mrgoodbeer.com, and webmaster-@-mrgoodbeer.com all get redirected to my Gmail address. With e-mail forwarding you can easily track where your e-mails are coming from. Be careful though…the more e-mail addresses you have, the more SPAM you will receive.
Shared vs Dedicated
When comparing hosting plans, you may notice plans for shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Shared hosting simply means that your web site will be hosted with other websites on the same server or machine. Shared hosting is good for the average web site where speed is not a priority.
A dedicated server is just that, a server that is dedicated to your website. The advantages of a dedicated server are speed and control. The disadvantage is cost, you will usually have to pay a much larger monthly fee for having a dedicated hosting plan. If you know nothing about Unix, Linux, or network administration make sure to get a managed dedicated server. The hosting company will take care of all the security and software patches/updates that arise over time.
Make sure to review the hosting company’s terms and FAQ concerning their dedicated servers to determine if their service is right for you.
Support
For the companies that do not have 24 hour support, you will have to determine if their phone support hours meet your specific needs. Make sure to note the location of the company and offset the support times for your time zone. If you plan on working on your web site during all hours of the day, make sure to choose a company with 24/7 phone support; otherwise, you will have to wait for them to open before you can get help to solve your problem.
CGI
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a program, also know as scripts, that can be run on a website to make the site more dynamic. CGI programs can be written in PERL, C, Unix shell, and countless other languages. It is best to select a hosting plan that allows CGI because you will undoubtedly run across an application or game that you want to modify or include on your site.
There are many resources on the web that list free CGI scirpts and countless companies offering CGI scripts for you to buy.
MySQL
MySQL is used for creating and maintaining web based databases. If you anticipating having some data on your site that your users might want to sort you will probably need to find a web host that supports MySQL. Some hosting companies specify how many databases you can have on your site and charge an additional monthly fee if you want more. You will have to determine how many databases you will need and select the appropriate web hosting plan.
FrontPage
FrontPage is a website creation and management what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) tool developed by Microsoft. The files generated by FrontPage may have extentions asscoiated with them. If you are using FrontPage to develop your site, you will need to make sure that the hosting plan you choose supports FrontPage extentions or your web pages may not display properly, if at all.
Server Operating System (OS)
For most basic websites you will not have worry about which OS your web hosting company is using. Most hosting plans are running on either Unix or Linux. For some unique web site features, you may need a Windows based server.
Setup Fee
Some hosting companies charge a setup fee when your account is created. This is usually a one time fee and may be waived, in some cases, when you pre-pay for your service. Check the hosting company’s terms carefully to determine the details of their setup fee.
SPAM Filter
Most hosting plans include some type of SPAM filter for your e-mail accounts. This feature can come in very handy if you are using POP email accounts.
Shopping Cart
Some hosting companies provide shopping cart features as part of their hosting plan. You do not have to worry about this featue if your web site is not selling products. Also, there are many different third party shopping cart applications and CGI scripts available on the web that you may choose to implement on your web site such as the ones found at PayPal.
January 27, 2008
10 Design Tips for Improving Your WebSite
When you do a website design, especially an e-commerce site, you want people to visit often, for reasonably long periods of time, and to make purchases. To do this, you must make your site easy to use.
Here are 10 tips for making your site customer-friendly:
1. Keep Your Pages Fast-Loading
Web users are impatient. Don’t force visitors to wait through JavaScript-enabled introductions or QuickTime movies before they can enter your site. Always provide a “Skip” or “Stop” button when using these elements.
2. Avoid Dead-End Pages
Always offer your customers a way out of a page. This could mean including a link to the main page on every page. Users are becoming increasingly accustomed to a navigation bar that links to all the sections of a site, and company logos that act as a navigation link to the home page. You can also offer text links on each page for going to “Top of page” or “Back.”
3. Facilitate Scanning
Study after study shows that most people don’t read on the Web. They scan content for information that is relevant. Facilitate this process by breaking up text with headings and subheadings. Use text links that allow readers to jump from section to section. Don’t expect people to scroll to find information on your site.
4. Avoid Overusing Graphics, Animation, and Multimedia
If they don’t add functionality, don’t use graphics, animation, movies, sounds, and so on. Only use these features if they enhance your customers’ experience. Product photos are often valuable additions to your site, but you might want to minimize the delays they could cause in load times by using thumbnail (small) images. You can link these thumbnail images to larger, more detailed images for customers who are interested in having a closer look. You can even include technology that allows viewers to zoom in on features or rotate the view of the product.
Limit the number of images on each page for faster load times. If pages or files will take some time to download, it’s best to forewarn your customers by noting the file size next to the link to them. If anything, users have less patience for state-of-the-art technology these days as the Web becomes dominated by new users, and the upgrade speeds for new browsers and plug-ins decline.
5. Don’t Assume That Everyone Uses the Same Browser
Avoid designing for a certain browser or trying to force a certain look. Some Web authors make extensive use of elaborate formatting tricks in a determined effort to coerce a client program into creating a specific visual rendering. These pages look good when viewed with the author’s browser of choice, but look bad in most or all other browsers.
6. Provide a Text Option
Browser preferences allow users to turn off graphics if they choose, and those who are using older browsers may not have the ability to view all images. So provide text links or alternative text tags in addition to graphics, including navigational buttons or bars.
7. Delay Registration
There are many reasons for asking visitors to register at your Web site, but don’t put your registration form on the first page. Show your content first; demonstrate that registration has its rewards before you ask visitors to spend their time on it.
8. Make Your Forms Flexible
Online forms are often necessary and useful for placing an order or setting up accounts. But try to make your forms flexible by limiting the number of required fields. Also, make errors easy to find and correct. If users have incorrectly entered a phone number, they shouldn’t need to complete the entire form again. Just have them correct the portion with the error, which should be highlighted to make the mistake obvious. Include a “Help” link in case customers run into problems while filling out a form. It’s just not worthwhile to people to take time to figure out how to make something work on your site when there are 5 million other sites to visit.
9. Avoid “Under Construction” Signs
By definition, Web documents change over time. Either your pages are useful to people (in which case you need not apologize for them) or they’re not — in which case, you aren’t ready to show them to the world and shouldn’t be making them public.
10. Provide a Clear Path for Customers to Make a Purchase
Display your products, descriptions, and prices prominently. If you’re going to talk about a product your company sells, explain how to order it. Many Web sites are guilty of not fully disclosing product and pricing information or making it clear how to buy their products. Even if you are not yet prepared to process transactions online, you can let customers know how to buy your products by including a telephone number or retail location where they can complete a purchase, or a date when the product will become available online.
January 25, 2008
What Some Web Hosts Don’t Want You To Know
Many start-up web hosts in their desperate attempt to get hosting business from you have plenty to hide. Here are some of the things they will never tell you. For some start-up web hosts, service does not exist. Low cost or budget web hosting services are the ones most likely to fall under this category. Some will not provide any information about their service while others will proudly announce that they provide 24/7 service. This is quite often not true.
Many of the low-cost web hosts have little experience in web hosting. A good way to find out about the level of service is to get the service telephone number and use it before you sign on. This should tell you a lot about the level of service you should realistically expect from the host you want to use.
The other common truth amongst many web-hosting enterprises is that they lack experience. Ensure before signing up that the company that you are going with has reasonable experience. How long has your host been in business? You do not want to be part of a start -up experiment for an important service.
One other thing you will need to be very careful with when using low cost or budget web hosts, is the fact that some of them are involved in many different businesses and not just web hosting. Ask what other businesses or projects your web host handles before signing up with them. You want a specialist not a generalist whose resources and time are bound to be so stretched that chances of you getting reliable services are very slim indeed.
It is also a fact that some small low cost web hosts do not offer the promised bandwidth. They should not advertise one thing and end up providing something else.
The best way to protect yourself from most of these nasty surprises is to go for a short term contract to begin with. You can for example start off paying on a monthly basis. That way it will be easier to change hosts when you discover something you don’t like.
Types of Web Hosting
It is critical to understand various types of web hosting service. As web hosting market is grown-up and thousands of web hosting companies offer hosting service on different platform. So, hosting companies have distinguish hosting package in few distinct categories like.
* Shared Hosting
* Co-located Hosting
* Virtual Hosting
* Managed Dedicated Hosting
* Unmanaged Dedicated Hosting
* Reseller Hosting
* Free Web Hosting
Shared Hosting:
Shared hosting is widely used among all plans. In shared web hosting a server space is shared with other clients of the hosting company. Hosting company manages the whole server to give their client guaranteed uptime, hardware maintenance, and software. Shared hosting is a type of cheap web hosting as number of sites hosted on same server. Also clients only need to pay for the space they occupied from hosting company. The main draw back of shared hosting is that number of web sites hosted on same server so heavy traffic will possibly harm your web site performance. Shared web hosting is good for small and medium size business or organization. Also many companies and organization use shared web hosting plan for back up of their hosting solution.
Co-located Hosting:
Co-located hosting means you have to buy a web server from vendor and place this web server to your host. Hosting company will do the rest of work. Your hosting company plugs your server into their data center where they provide facilities like cage cabinet, internet connection, regulated power, security and support. Good Co-located hosting provider offer technical support and maintenance. Co-located hosting is best solution for ecommerce related sites because this type of hosting dedicatedly server only your site. So, co-located hosting plan brings peak performance.
Virtual Hosting:
Virtual Hosting is also called Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. Virtual hosting is a powerful feature that hosts more than one site on same computer and IP Address. Many virtual hosting provider offers to host multiple domains, email features, file storage and web site creation tool.
Virtual hosting is a best solution for small scale industries or small business that don’t require excessive bandwidth.
Managed Dedicated Hosting:
Managed dedicated hosting means to lease an entire server from your hosting companies and they offer technical support and manage your server. Managed dedicated hosting is a key for non technical users as hosting company provide full maintenance, uptime guarantee, hardware warranty, security patch update, and support.
Unmanaged Dedicated Hosting:
Unmanaged Hosting is a type of dedicated hosting where user has control on web server. Unmanaged dedicated hosting requires more technical knowledge as user itself have to manage whole server. If you want to lease a web server for unmanaged plan than you must have good command on server administration. Unmanaged hosting requires technical expertise as client need to configure whole server and one small mistake will cause system failure.
Reseller Hosting:
Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting in which hosting company offer their client to purchase web space and allow them to resell allocated space and bandwidth. Reseller Web Hosting Provider must require little knowledge of web hosting service to get started their own hosting service. Reseller hosting provider is not responsible for providing maintenance, technical support and other web service.
When client have some problem in accessing server or downtime than technical support is held by hosting company that host reseller host.
Free Web Hosting:
A web hosting company that offer to host your site at free of cost. Free Web Hosting Company that offers limited features with advertisement or link on the web site. Free hosting also put popup, pop-under, banners or other links for advertising their product. They generate money by the above mentioned ways.
Free hosting providers generally limit your usage of bandwidth, web space, don’t allow mp3, mpeg or zip files. Also they don’t guarantee any uptime and restrict size of files for uploading.
