Posts Tagged ‘web hosting’

How To Choose Good Web Hosting Provider

March 23rd, 2010

Important Advices - how to choose good web hosting provider:

Disk Space&Monthly Traffic

Does it have enough space for your needs? And also monthly traffic is related with web site and resources that it offers to users. If you envisage that you will expand your site eventually, you might want to cater for future expansion. More web sites uses less than 250 MB - but also it is fact that you should predict such needs.

Host-ed.net offers 3 web hosting plans - Free(150 MB Disk space),  Personal Plan(120 GB Disk space) and Business Plan (300 GB DISK SPACE)

Reliability and speed of access

As we have written in our article - Web Hosting Company and Good SEO - the main problem that you need to be aware of is server downtime. Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low - it really should be 99.5% or higher. The host should provide some sort of refund (eg prorated refund or discount) if it falls below that figure. Note though that guarantees are often hard to enforce from your end - the host usually requires all sorts of documentation. However, without that guarantee, the web host will have little incentive to ensure that its servers are running all the time. Good solution for your web hosting provider is Host-ed.net - 99.9% Uptime!

Technical Support

Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Note that I will not accept a host which does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised at how often things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. Incidentally, just because a host advertises that it has 24/7 support does not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, etc. Check out how long they take to respond. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent. You wouldn’t want to sign up for a host that is run by a bunch of salesmen who only know how to sell and not fix problems. HOST-ED.NET has 24/7 support!

PHP, FTP, Perl, SSI, .htaccess, telnet, SSH, MySQL, crontabs, Oracle

It is very important which technologies you can use! PHP is one of the world-leading web scripts! It is used with MySQL(and not only)! Exists thousands of free programs, CMS, forums , galleries, blogs, etc so it is preferred language for most web masters! Also you should check the version of PHP, MySQL. Host-ed.net offers you PHP 4/5/6(you can switch between them according your needs), MySQL 4/5, Perl, CGI, SSH, etc

SSL (secure server), Shopping Cart

If you are planning on doing any sort of business through your website, you might want to look out to see if the host provides these facilities. These facilities normally involve a higher priced package or additional charges. The main thing is to check to see if they are available at all before you commit to the host. You will definitely need SSL if you want to collect credit card payments on your site. Host-ed.net provides you SSL certificates

To be continued…

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How to Avoid Downtime When Changing Hosts

September 23rd, 2009

One of the major problems and greatest fears for many businesses when moving hosts is downtime. When your site goes down you can lose visitors, sales and potentially search engine rankings.

Moving web hosts should be a straightforward exercise, there should be little to no down time and your search engine rankings should not feel the pinch.

There are four main points you need to consider when moving from one webhost to another:

Check the IP range you are moving to - there are bad ‘IP’ ranges out there that have been banned or experienced trouble. The last thing you want to do is find your site sitting on one of these ranges. A quick way of checking is simply to see if they are in Google index. Your site’s natural search listings will suffer if found or associated with a bad IP range.

Take a full backup of the website - if anything goes wrong you can roll back quickly, your old host should have a copy of the site (better to be safe than sorry).

Always test - everything may look the same, but it is good practice to test all forms and applications on the site that could break, including the database.

Change DNS - once you have moved the site over to the new host, and everything is working correctly you need to “flick the switch”. This is a simple matter of changing your DNS. Updating your DNS can be done via your registrar, simply login and update the current DNS with the NEW IP of the website.

Finally, wait for the DNS to propagate, this means, wait for the rest of the internet to notice that the site has moved and that it must look at the new IP address for your web address. This process should take no longer than 48 Hours.

Dedicated or shared hosting, which is better?

There is an ongoing debate as to which hosting is better for search engine optimization, dedicated or shared / virtual hosting.

Dedicated hosting means that your website will receive its own ‘IP’, assuming it is easier for the search engines to identify your website.

Shared hosting means that your website will be sharing the same ‘IP’ as a number of other websites. Some people believe that there is a potential of your site being blacklisted due to another websites actions.

This is not true, search engines will not black list an entire IP unless of course this IP and the websites sharing it are clearly displaying typical spam activity i.e. link farming, link sharing etc.

From an SEO perspective, either hosting solution is suitable.

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What features should I look for when choosing a web host?

September 20th, 2009

The more you know about what you need, the easier it will be to find the right web host for you. For starters, you should determine the following:

1. Do you want a shared or virtual private server?
Depending on what your requirements are, you may be better off with a virtual private server (VPS) than a shared server. Virtual private servers are typically used in cases where there is a high level of traffic, there is a strong need for security, or you wish to run your own customised software and applications rather than the standard ones supplied by the host. Host-ed.net offers VPS packages with root access and Linux operation system installed. Basically you can install all aplications you need and run every software you need, which may not be possible on the standart shared hosting platform.

If you do not have a big site that will be receiving a lot of traffic, then shared should be fine for you.

2. Are you a good match?
Is your host’s server, software and support services compatible with the skills and software that you (or your design team) are using? If, for instance, you are working in a Linux environment, then it makes little sense to choose an Linux host. We provide the VPS with root access and Linux, PHP, MySQL and etc. installed. Please note that if you need windows hosting we could provide you with a VPS, but you should be responsible for finding, installing and managing the software. In that case we can just provide the hardware and you do the rest.

3. Are You Flexible and Can I Upgrade?
It is much easier to upgrade your current hosting plan than to start looking for a new one. With our hosting plans, there will be some features that you need and some offered that you don’t need. Be sure to focus on the essentials that are required to launch your website. It’s a good idea to choose a host that will allow you to expand and upgrade your plan as and when your website grows. We have 3 options of VPS upgrades our Starter VPS, Pro VPS and Advanced VPS. We also have custom upgrades from which you can upgrade single options like disk space, traffic, RAM or CPU. You can also upgrade from a shared hosting to a VPS in the hosting control panel

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What is Virtual Web Hosting?

September 20th, 2009

Servers are directly connected to the Internet backbone on fast communication links (much like phone lines, only these lines are bigger, and carry digital data, instead of voices). Your Web site will reside on one of servers at a web host’s facility, yet you can view it and work on it from your own PC. This is virtually like having a computer of your own, hence the term Virtual Web Hosting. A web hosting provider hosts your Web site by placing it on this “server” (since it “serve” content up to Web surfers) which are designed specifically to host Web sites.
Often, virtual private servers (VPS) are just like a dedicated server only that it is part of it. Each VPS has its own operation system and log in credentioals. host-ed.net virtual private server plans are suitable for everybody, who has a higher ranking websites that needs more server resources. The difference between web hosting shared plans and virtual private server plans is that on the VPS the resources (disk space, traffic, CPU, Ram, etc) are guaranteed where as on the shared hosting these resources depend on how loaded the shared server is. The other advantage of the our VPS packages is that they are fully upgradable and if you need more disk space and less traffic for your site you can only ungrade your disk space with out having to pay for expencive predefined VPS or even dedicated server plans. For more information on our VPS packages do not hesitate to contact us

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What types of shared hosting are available?

September 13th, 2009

Although many different types of shared hosting are available, UNIX/Linux and Windows hosting dominate. Which type of hosting you choose depends on what technology your web site will utilize. Web sites that will utilize PHP programming and a MySQL database (as many Open Source Content Management Systems do) should use a UNIX/Linux based platform. Sites utilizing technologies like ColdFusion, IIS, VBSCript, Windows Media, .ASP or .NET programming, an MSSQL database, or a range of Microsoft solutions such as Frontpage, should use a Windows based platform (Windows 2003, Windows 2008). If you have doubds on what kind of hosting you need feel free to contact us at our web hosting contact page.

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How many accounts are available to one server?

September 13th, 2009

The number of accounts on one physical server is entirely up to the web host, and as such, those considering shared hosting should examine very carefully which web host to use.
We at Host-ed.net know that customer satisfaction is more important that reaching the highest possible profit rates and we maintain 500-700 users per server, which in the shared hosting field is considered as low number of users hosted per server. Our servers are powerful enough to even support more than 1000 users per server, but we do not want to risk the performance and the quality of the service for a few more dollars. After all quality service and happy customers would bring us more value than a few overstuffed servers and dissatisfied customers

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What are the disadvantages of shared hosting?

September 13th, 2009

Because in shared web hosting server resources are shared between a number of account holders, if traffic to a particular website spikes, it will utilize more of the resources available than the other websites. This means that the performance of your website is often at the mercy of other, better performing web sites on the same server. In addition, being shared, hacker activity, malware, viruses, and any disruptive activity (DOS attacks, etc.) directed at a particular web site could impact all the accounts on a server. That is why it is always recommended to keep a back up version of your site each time you make changes. Furthermore, because of users’ lack of control of server resources, they are wholly dependent on the support provided by a host. If support is under par, this can lead to tremendous frustration on behalf of the user. The quality of support is key to most people’s decision regarding which web host to use. Always look for 24/7/365 support department. Host-ed.net’s team is working 24 hours a day which is even available on international holidays like Christmas, New Year, Easter, etc and response time is 1-2 hours guaranteed. So if you have a personal or small business site you can easily host it with us on a shared hosting account without having to bare the disadvantages of the shared hosting, but only enjoying its advantages.

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What are the advantages of shared hosting?

September 13th, 2009

The key advantage of shared hosting is the low cost. Given that a number of websites share a server, the cost of maintenance is shared between a number of accounts. This brings end user costs down considerably. A good web hosting account offering in excess of 150 GB of disk space and similar amounts of data transfer can be available for less than $10 a month. Another advantage is that as the web host is responsible for managing a server, support is available if issues occur with the server. This means that people with relatively few IT skills can still set up a hosting account and a web site.

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Web Hosting and SEO

June 21st, 2009

You probably know by now that web hosting is a popular service millions of people rely on to create their websites.  These services are used for everything from blogs and personal sites to e-commerce and community sites.  What many people don’t know is the importance of web hosting as it relates to search engine optimization.  You can truly benefit from search engine traffic by leveraging your hosting solution and devising a sound SEO strategy.

Domain and URLs

Before even purchasing a web hosting plan, you probably want to get yourself a domain first.  If you already have a name registered with another host, it shouldn’t be difficult to transfer it over to a new provider.  If not, you can easily register one for about $15 a year.  When it comes to SEO, both your domain and URLs are extremely important.  This is because when the search engine spiders come crawling, they index your pages individually opposed to the website itself.  With most hosting solutions, you have the ability to create custom URLs, so when used in conjunction with your domain name, it makes a great way to increase visibility in the eyes of the search engines.

Search Engine Friendly Features

The features a web hosting provider offers can also benefit your SEO efforts.  Because optimizing for targeted search engine traffic has proven to be effective, many hosts now offer tools that help research and choose the best keywords for your site.  Another great feature is the handy web application.  These utilities give you graphical statistics on your website traffic, showing when visitors came in and where they come from.  They usually show you which search engine spiders visited your site as well.  Then you have companies that offer free search engine submissions, free marketing credits, Google webmaster tools and more.   The average web hosting package is loaded with an arsenal of tools that can aid in SEO.

Finding the Right Solution

Although web hosting plays a major role in SEO, the actual results all depends on the hosting company.  This is why it is so crucial to put an emphasis on quality and reliability rather than the cost of service.  There are many types of hosting out there and finding a cheap solution is easier than ever before.  When looking for a service, you need to keep in mind that you are essentially placing the fate of your search engine rankings in the hands of another company.  This is one relationship where trust is key.  Without doing your research and rushing into a service, you can end up with a solution that does more harm to your visibility than good.  Worst of all, you may not even be aware of it.

You should also be cautious about hosting multiple domains on a single account and server.  While this may seem like a practical and cost effective move, it could also hinder your cause.

It is speculated that search engines view linking from within the same IP address as a move done to generate false link popularity.  In order to get the best results, SEO and web hosting need to work in perfect harmony. Host-ed.net is good solution for web hosting provider which cares about all aspects in building your web site - from development process to SEO.

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