http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/affordable-web-hosting-a-primer-for-the-new-webmaster.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/affordable-web-hosting-a-primer-for-the-new-webmaster.html Mon, 03 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0500
Price is more often than not the most important consideration. If you are new to web hosting and just setting up a new site you more than likely don't have the extra capital to spend on web hosting, so you will want the most return on your investment. Compare the following characteristics across several providers to ensure you are getting the most for your money.

What amount of traffic allowance (bandwidth) do the plans you are considering offer? Some of the more affordable plans on the market offer a considerable amount of traffic compared to higher priced plans, be sure to allow for your sites traffic to grow when making your choice, you don't want to be upgrading your plan the moment the traffic to your site increases, all it can take is for another internet user to link to your website from another high traffic website to cause a massive influx of visitors.

What amount of disk space (storage) do the plans you are considering offer? Don't lock yourself into a plan that does not cover what disk space you may need in the future. Many affordable web hosting providers offer a good amount of disk space that should cover your needs well into the future if you choose the correct plan.

Do they have a good service record? Is the host you are considering reliable, are they down a lot, or very rarely? This is an important factor when choosing a hosting provider, nothing discourages visitors to your site more than a "this page is currently unavailable" message, that message could be a potential lost sale if your website is business oriented. Of course you will need to expect some downtime, every host needs to perform maintenance on their servers from time to time, but look for hosts that offer uptime guarantees.

Traffic statistics! You will want to be able to access these, initially you may not think traffic statistics are very important, but over time they can become useful tool, you can use these statistics to analyse the traffic coming to your site, from this analysis you can better direct your advertising budget, and learn how to grow your traffic. Many of the affordable web hosting providers supply traffic reporting features, be sure to choose a provider that offers this feature.

There are many more features that you may find useful on offer from web hosting providers such as domain registration, if the provider offers domain registration and renewal it is a good idea to take up the offer, this eliminates one of the resposibilities of maintaining a web site.

There are many outstanding affordable web hosting providers on the internet all after your business, with the above information you should be able to make a wise choice on your web hosting provider.


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David J. Smith writes about Dreamhost and other prominent hosts at Webhost-Advisor.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/choosing-your-first-hosting-provider.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/choosing-your-first-hosting-provider.html Sun, 02 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0600
An excellent site running on a poor host is a recipe for disaster, if your provider cannot keep your site online 24 hours, 7 days a week you could be missing out on visitors and if your site is for your business, this could mean lost sales as well. It is very important to consider several elements when choosing your first web host, too many people are dissatisfied with their current web hosting provider. First and foremost, the best web hosting provider is the one that suits your needs.

Disk Space

The first thing to take into consideration is disk space. The amount of disk space your will require depends on the size of the web site, and of course how much money you can afford to spend. Ideally you should always go with a plan that has room to grow, if your site currently is around 200mb you must ask yourself, how large will the site be in 12 months, or even 2 years. If you plan to serve media files from your site such as videos, flash animations, or any other type of content that tends to be large in size, you will need to allow for this as well.

Bandwidth

The second thing to consider is bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data you will be serving to your visitors, if you have plans of having a high traffic site in the future, you should consider a plan that allows for a high amount of bandwidth. As with disk space, it is also wise to consider more bandwidth than what your site will require initially, not less.

Serving Speed

The speed that pages are served from the host is often overlooked when it comes to choosing a hosting provider, you should always track down other sites hosted at the web host you are considering. If pages are not served in a timely fashion, your visitors may not wait around to view your content.



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David J. Smith writes about Dreamhost and other prominent web hosting providers at www.Webhost-Advisor.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/affordable-web-hosting-shared-web-hosting-explained.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/affordable-web-hosting-shared-web-hosting-explained.html Sun, 02 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0600
Shared Web Hosting - What is it?

Shared hosting is an economic way of hosting web sites where you do not require high performance (CPU workload) and high bandwidth. As the name "Shared Hosting" suggests, the server that is hosting the web pages is shared between many users, this is how web hosting providers can sell web hosting space at affordable prices down to as low as $3-$4 a month, many accounts on one server spreads the cost of the server among many users. Whereas a dedicated server can cost upwards of $100 per month.

With many web sites hosted on a web server you can be sure that web hosting providers will not make any compromises on performance issues, they will also not make any compromises on security, as one web site with a security issue could affect all other sites on the server, for this reason shared servers are monitored and maintained 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by IT professionals to ensure minimum downtimes.

The Advantages of Shared Web Hosting

As many web sites are hosted per server, hosting providers are able to offer very competitively priced shared hosting plans. For shared hosting you can expect to pay $3-$8 per month for shared hosting services, with some providers offering up to 20,000MB of space and 1TB of bandwidth within in this price range. This is amazing value, thanks to competition web hosting is now within the reach of the personal web designer or hobbyist, and not reserved for just businesses with large budgets.

Shared hosting web servers due to their nature need to be maintained round the clock by highly skilled IT professionals, this lets you concentrate on managing your web site, you can leave all the other things related to web hosting to the professionals.

Shared hosting web masters can manage their web site using what is commonly known as a control panel to manage their hosting, this allows you to add domains, monitor statistics, create databases, manage email addresses and all manner of other things. Each web hosting provider varies what facilities are made available to you in their control panel, but thanks to fierce competition between web hosting providers these days the differences between each providers feature set is decreasing.

Todays shared web hosting service comes with enough disk space and bandwidth to be more than sufficient for small businesses, and if you ever need resources than what your current plan offers you can always upgrade as your web site grows in size and popularity.

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David J. Smith writes about Dreamhost and other prominent web hosting providers at Webhost Advisor

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/finding-the-best-host-for-your-companys-needs.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/finding-the-best-host-for-your-companys-needs.html Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0600
The next step is to find a web hosting provider, but how do you evaluate web hosting, and then make a choice on which provider to pay your hard earned money too?

Choosing the correct host for your company’s needs is a very important step, if not the most important step when taking your business online. The host you choose is responsible for placing your website online, and keeping it there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is nothing worse for a business to have a website that is not accessible by your customers, if your site is not online it has the potential to cost you a sale, and also sales in the future, if a prospective customer attempts to go to your website only to find it offline, the chances of that customer ever returning again are very slim.

Ok, so what should I look for in a web host?

There are several factors that you will need to evaluate before making your short list of hosting providers, below I will outline the most important aspects that you will need to cover.

1. Firstly you will need to evaluate the requirements of your website. Will you need shopping cart facilities, what type of content will your website be providing, what methods of payment will you offer, you will also need to think in to the future as well, will you need the ability to expand the site, taking a business online is a very big step and should be a long term step as well so you will need to think long term with your planning. Write a short list of what your website will require to properly function.

Details you will need to account for.
Disk space and bandwidth. Disk space refers to the amount of storage your web host will provide you to store your website. You will need to account for the current size of your website now, and also allow for what disk space you will require in the future as your website grows.

Bandwidth refers to the amount of data (pages, files) served from your website to your customers, if your website will be subject to high traffic, you will need to take the amount of bandwidth the host provides.

Also you will need to check what programming languages your website will require, languages such as PHP, Perl/CGI, JSP, Cold Fusion and ASP may be used on your website to perform certain functions, your chosen web host will need to support the programming languages that your site requires.

Now that you have a list of your requirements, it is time to narrow down your list of providers that support all the features required.

2. Contact each of the hosts you have on your list, confirming what they offer and if it meets your requirements, also ask for a list of references you can contact, some of the best information about a web host can be gleaned from its customers, the question you should ask an existing customer is; “how reliable is the host?”. This question is the most important; it refers to two things, reliability of their hosting when it comes to serving of your website, and also refers to reliability of their mail system. Reliability of their mail system is just as important as serving of your website.

3. Technical support, test it out, call the web hosts technical support line at various times of the day and check how long it takes to get through to support staff, also send technical support an email to test how long it takes to receive a response. If you are on hold for 30 minutes waiting to talk to support about a problem with your website, that is 30 minutes that your site is offline, and also 30 minutes of your own time wasted with which you could be performing more productive jobs.

Finally you should choose a host that meets your expectations and with whom you feel comfortable with, approach choosing a web host the same way you would any other major business decision, because after all it is your money paying for the service.


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David Smith writes about Midphase Web Hosting at http://www.webhost-advisor.com/midphase.php

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>