How to ...

How to Choose a Right Web Hosting Service?

Indeed, 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.

Review

Network Solutions

Network Solutions has been in business for 25 years; we pioneered the domain name registration service and are the leading provider of Internet services. Over 65% of Fortune 100 companies, along with many other individuals and small, medium and large businesses, rely on us for products and services to do business online.


We are reliable, with 99.9% server uptime and live customer service available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We host 7 million domain names, 500,000 e-mailboxes and 200,000 Web sites.

Today we offer a broad array of products and services, including:
* Domain Name Registration
* Web Hosting
* Web Site Design
* SSL Certificates * E-mail
* Online Sales & Marketing
* Security
* Web Site Tools & Utilities
* Business Services
* Reseller Programs

Network Solutions offers complete packages or a-la-carte services to help you succeed online. Whether you want a domain name to establish your online identity, an e-mail address to reflect your brand, a Web site for your business or personal life, or a full E-commerce solution, online marketing or other business services, Network Solutions has the products and services to meet your online needs.

Guide

A Java Developer's Guide To Web Hosting

You make a living writing enterprise java applications, and you would like to work on your own projects for fun or profit, you would like to create your own web site or you would like to have a place to host your open source project. You look around for hosting providers, and all you see is PHP and PERL support, with very few hosting companies supporting Java, what to do?

Although the number of hosting companies supporting Java is increasing, support varies from nearly non-existent to companies that are deeply committed to their Java support.

There are three types of hosting plans available:

• Shared hosting
• Virtual Private Server hosting
• Dedicated Server hosting.

With a shared hosting plans, several web sites are hosted on the same server, sharing the server's resources and using the same IP address. Virtual Private Server (VPS) plans consist of a server that is split into multiple virtual servers, each virtual server has it's own IP address, some companies call these types of plans Virtual Dedicated Servers. Dedicated servers are the most expensive type of plan, each dedicated server customer gets their own physical server, nice to have, but prohibitively expensive for personal web sites and small operations.

At Ensode.net, we recommend that you find a hosting company that provides Virtual Private Server (VPS) support (some hosting companies call it Virtual Dedicated Server), since they provide a nice balance between price and control. A VPS server is like having your own server, usually with root access, which gives you the freedom to install any application you might need, including version control systems like Subversion or CVS, WebDAV, or anything else you might need. With a VPS plan you will most likely get your own IP address, and your server will be not only your web server, but also your mail and database server.

VPS hosting plans tend to be somewhat more expensive than shared hosting plans, but it is our belief that they are worth the extra cost since they provide much more control and flexibility. If you are a Java developer, chances are you are used to "getting your hands dirty", and working on a server using good old Unix commands. Shared hosting plans tend to have "user friendly" (dumbed down?) interfaces, which might simplify administration, but can also severely limit what you are able to do, for example, let's say a shared hosting company gives you 300 megabytes of disk space to host your web site, and an additional 300 megabytes for your email, if your web site takes 5 megabytes of space, but your email server is getting full, there is no way to allocate more space to store emails and reduce the allocation of web space. In addition to leaving you unable to reallocate resources as needed, you can also forget about installing any applications on your server. Another disadvantage of shared hosting plans is that an IP address is shared among several customers, which could have potential problems. For example, if one of the customers uses their mail server for bulk emailing, the IP address of that mail server may be banned from several systems, in a shared hosting plan environment, this would affect all the customers using the same server.

With few exceptions, shared hosting plans that support Java do so through a shared JVM, which means that you have no way of starting or stopping the JVM, and the same JVM is used to run the Java applications of all the hosting company's clients on the server. With a VPS plan, since you have access to your own (virtual) server, it is a given that you get full control over the JVM.

You can use your favorite search engine to find companies that offer VPS plans. Good luck and may your site become immensely popular.

Review

Website Hosting Special

BUSINESS HOSTING

WEB FEATURES E-MAIL FEATURES 5 GB Disk Space 100 GB Data Transfer Front Page 2002 Extensions 1 Year FREE Domain Name Shared SSL Server CGI Directory & Script Library Web-based Account Control Panel 99.9% Uptime Guarantee 50 Mailboxes Unlimited Aliases Unlimited Forwards Unlimited Autoresponders POP3/IMAP/SMTP Access Webmail "Catch All" E-mail Address INCLUDED SOFTWARE & SERVICES ADVANCED FEATURES Free Domain Name AddWeb Website Promoter Light CreateIt! Desktop 3 Urchin Web Statistics ASP Perl/PHP Server Side Includes Access to raw log files Password Protected Directories HARDWARE & NETWORK SUPPORT Redundant Tier 1 Backbone Connections UPS & Generator Backup Daily Tape Backups 24/7 Toll Free Phone Support Free "Call Me Back" Service E-mail Support On-line User Groups Extensive Knowledgebase

Tips

Choosing Web Hosting

With such an overwhelming number of web hosting companies offering such a wide variety of services, it is very difficult to find the best web-hosting package for you. So try not to take a hasty decision and sign up with any web-hosting provider. Instead, first find out what web hosting features are essential so that you have a better idea of the web-hosting package that's best for your needs.

In the current scenario, free web hosting is gaining more popularity. But at times it fails to match the clients' requirements. Majority of the free web hosting services are reliable, but sometimes they tend to disappoint. Various web-hosting companies provide minimum free services and compensate by charging for the expanded services. If your company is amateur and requires only a home page then this it is the best option to go for. Before selecting a web hosting company it is sensible to do a market research about the company's reputation and reliability.

When choosing your web hosting package, you want to know about disk space. If you're going to be building a big site, they you will need a lot of disk space. The range is usually from 5 MB up to 300 MB. So even if you're starting out small, make sure your web hosting provider has the ability to grow with you as large as you want to go.

You also need to take into account email accounts when signing up for a web-hosting package. Make sure you have enough email addresses to get started, and that you aren't being charged for more than you need. Again, know how many you need, but choose a web hosting service that can offer as many as you need as you grow and know what the charges for additional email accounts will be.

One important factor that should be kept in mind while selecting a web hosting company is the support provided by them. Majority of the people having websites are not aware of the latest technology. So they require a superb technical support in all the technical issues. You should be aware of the fact that the chosen web hosting package provides you a 24/7 support. It is sensible to check their downtime reputation too.

So for a final look there are few important web-hosting features, which can be included in your package, or you may require them at the time of expansion.

• FrontPage extensions
• FTP directory
• Daily backups
• Hit counter
• Website statistics
• Redirect URL
• File manager
• SSL
• Shopping cart
• Auto responder
• Access logs
• Mailing Lists
• Customized error messages
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Your own CGI-BIN
• Site search engine