Web Hosting Tips
Hosting Tips and Information

Choosing a web hosting solution in today’s time is a task that is difficult to perform. Why? Simply because of the rush of hosting solutions providers in the market and the large number of plans being offered by every one of them. So what can one do to pick the right web hosting provider. Well, here are some pointers which can help you get the right type of hosting provider for your website or your online business.

Reputation of the provider:
The first thing that needs to be looked at is the reputation of the hosting provider. You need to ensure that your hosting provider is reputed before you choose to buy a hosting plan from him. You can find about the hosting provider by talking to other clients of the host or by doing an independent research on the internet.

Cost of plan:
The next thing that you need to take care of is the cost associated with the hosting plan that you are thinking of getting for your website. You need to ensure that you are not being overcharged. At the same time you need to ensure that you are not getting stuck with a hosting provider which is cheap but offers terrible service.

Customer support:
A good hosting provider would give you 24/7 customer support. If your hosting provider is not giving this service, you need to move on and find someone else. Why? Because you can encounter problems with your hosting plan at any time of the day or night and you would not want to be without customer service when you encounter a problem as that might lead to unnecessary downtime for your website.
Most hosting providers offer chat, email or telephone based customer support to their clients.

Features:
You need to ensure that your hosting provider all the features that you need to keep your site running and provide a good experience to your visitors. Hence you should enquire about the features being offered by the hosting provider before making a commitment.
Some important features include unlimited databases, unlimited email accounts, dedicated IP addresses, SSL certificates, user control panels, option to upgrade plans and sub-domains, etc.

Security and reliability:
You need to make sure that your hosting provider is offering secure platform for your website to be hosted upon. This is due to the fact that security leads to customer trust, something that is quite important for a business. Also you need to make sure your hosting provider is offering a 99.99% uptime guarantee because you would not want to lose customers just because your website was down.

These are some of the things that need to be taken into consideration while choosing a web hosting solutions for your website. Of all these things, one important thing that you need to remember is that your choice of your hosting provider is dependent on the needs of your website and not on what you like and what you don’t. So it is better to keep your website’s requirements in mind while buying a hosting plan. This way you would get a plan that is perfect for your website in the long run and you would not have to change hosting providers often.

Green webhosting or eco-friendly hosting is a hosting plan that ensures use of green technologies with a view to reduce the impact on the environment. Green hosting includes features such as use of renewable source of energy to power data centers, planting of trees around the center and use of power management and power saving techniques while providing hosting services to clients.

In recent times green hosting has become quite popular, simply because of the fact that more and more people are becoming aware about environmental pollution and want to do their part in protecting the environment. Most of the large web hosting companies which offer green hosting solutions generate their own energy from renewable source of energy. But the thing with green hosting is that even if a hosting company cannot generate its own electricity from renewable energy it can buy renewable energy by making use of renewable energy certificates and get the status of a green hosting solutions provider. These certificates are a guarantee that the energy being provided to the hosting providers comes from renewable sources of energy.

There are several benefits of making use of green web hosting solutions. The first advantage is that if companies are generating their energy themselves, then they are lowering the cost of energy that they are using, something that can trickle down to the customer in the long run, when costs of setting up the generation equipment is recovered.

Another advantage is that by using a green hosting solution, you are reducing your carbon footprint. This can help you reduce global warming and also help in reducing the pollution in the environment; something that can help reduce the toxicity in the environment protecting future generations from illnesses that might be caused by this toxicity.

Another advantage of using such a solution is that there are several non-profit organizations which offer incentives for people using green hosting plans. Not only this, some companies even provide free software applications to people hosting their websites and online applications on green hosting solutions. This a great way of promoting such an environmental friendly hosting solution.

However, the biggest question which arises while making use of such a plan is whether it is cost effective. Well, the answer to this question is quite complex actually. This is due to the fact that the answer depends on how you think about the cost involved. If you believe that money is everything for you, then this might not be a cost effective plan. Now if you take into account the cost which you would have to bear to clean up the environment in the future if you opt not to go in for such a plan, then using such a plan is much more cost effective than using a traditional hosting plan.

Thus, it can be seen that a green hosting plan is great for protection of the environment and is a method which can be used to contribute to the cleaning up of the environment and making our planet a better place for our future generations.

With every type of hosting solution there are some pros and cons associated, the same is the case with cloud based web hosting service. A cloud based web hosting plan is a hosting solution wherein hosting of web sites is done on the cloud, which is basically an interconnection of servers, with a view to leverage the large computing power of the cloud. Let us take a look at some of the pros and cons associated with using a cloud based web hosting service to host your website.

Pros
There are several different advantages of using a cloud based hosting solutions. Some of these are listed below:

A cloud based hosting solution is accessible on the move. This means that you and the IT staff of your company have access to your hosting and business programs where ever they go. All your business applications are online so you can make use of any of them even if you are away from your office.

The cost of using a cloud based hosting solution is low. This is because you are liable to pay for only the resources which you are using. This is not the case with any other type of hosting solution where in you have to pay for the resources even if you are not using them.
With a cloud based hosting plan, you have access to unlimited resources, so even if there is a spike in traffic all of a sudden your website would not face any downtime or would not be bogged down.

Another advantage is that with a cloud hosting plan your website would not be facing any downtime, since in a cloud solutions even if one web server goes down the network is still up and other servers can be used to keep the online applications running.

Cons:
Although there are several advantages of using a cloud based hosting solution, there are a few cons associated with using such a plan too.

If the code of your website is not optimized, it can lead to huge expenses for you in the long run. You need to have an optimized website in order to leverage the low cost of a cloud hosting plan.

Most of the cloud based hosts are not environment friendly and do not make use of renewable resources to power their data centers. Hence, using such a plan might be contrary to the environmental policy followed by your business.

Another problem with using such a solution is that in some cases it might be difficult to set up properly. But these days most of the cloud based hosting providers offer services to help you set up your website on the cloud.

Although cloud based hosting solutions have some problems associated with them, these problems can be solved very easily. Also, cloud solutions provide a service and performance incentive that is difficult to match. Hence, using such a plan to power your website and your online business is something that can prove advantageous for your business in the long run.

In today’s modern time, having a web presence is something that is quite important for the success and growth of a business. This is the reason why every corporate out there wants to have an online presence and get more leads with regards to clients. But, the first and the foremost thing that is required to get an online presence is a hosting solution. Though, there are several different hosting alternatives available in the market, there is none as powerful and feature rich as a dedicated server hosting plan.

A dedicated server hosting plan is a hosting solution where users have the ability to have their own dedicated server at their disposal and also have the ability to manage all the resources that are associated with that server. With this kind of a plan, customers have the option to have complete control over their hosting environment and have the option of allocating the resources of the server in manner they deem fit. Not only this, dedicated server hosting solution users have the option to install any operating system on their server and also choose the applications that need to be installed on the server.

Although dedicated server hosting solutions are costly in nature, they offer features that are not included in other type of hosting solutions. This means that by using a dedicated server hosting solution you can customize your server on the basis of the needs of your website and provide a user experience that cannot be provided by using any other type of hosting solutions. Another thing is that with a dedicated server hosting plan, you can ensure that your website is performing in the manner in which you want it to perform.

A great benefit of using such a plan is that your website becomes secure. A secure website is something that is required to get customer trust and once your customers trust you new customers are bound to flock to your business. Another thing is that with a dedicated server hosting plan, your website would never have any downtime. This is something that generates customer trust and lead to better revenue prospects for your website.

Not only this your business can gain by making use of dedicated server plan by offering several auxiliary services using the same web server which is being used to host your website. These services might include online customer support for your clients, a forum for discussion of the products or services you are offering or a company blog which can be used to promote your business and provide more information to clients.

Thus it can be seen that a dedicated server hosting plan can be great for your business and can help you transform your online business for good. Also, since a dedicated server hosting plan is something which allows you to manage your server resources in any manner you want, you can make use of such a plan to provide a great user experience to the people visiting your site, thus prompting them to buy the products and the services that you are promoting. Thus such a plan can help you increase your revenue and help your business grow to the next level.

These days web developers are moving towards a new type of hosting solution for their creations. The move has been a result of the needs of the developers to have a custom hardware solution for their online project. And the hosting solution that has made all this possible is a colocation hosting solution. A colocation solution is a hosting plan in which you buy your own server and mail it to a provider to have it hosted and connected to the internet.

A colocation hosting solution involves making a choice of the server configurations on the basis of what your website’s requirements are. Developers make use of colocation plans if they think that the server solutions offered by traditional hosting providers would not be able to fulfill the requirements of the website they are developing or if they believe that using a self owned server would ensure better performance and more security.

The biggest advantage of using a colocation plan is that you have the option to configure your hardware and software in manner you want. Also, you need to pay only for using the rack space of the hosting provider and nothing else. This means that you might end up paying a lot less than a comparable dedicated server hosting plan if you choose to get a colocation hosting plan.

Another big advantage is that since server configuration is your forte, you are free install and use whatever you need. This means that there are no restrictions on the type of software applications which you can use on your server and absolutely no restriction on the way you want to manage and use the resources of your server.

One more thing is that with a colocation hosting plan, you can provide a great user experience for all the visitors to your website, because the hardware is configured according to the needs of your website and your users. Not only this, with such a plan you can you have option to decide upon the kind of security protocols you want to follow for your website. You can configure your website to be super secure or configure it as an open system; something that might be prohibited on traditional hosting plans.

The only problem in using a colocation plan is that you need to purchase your own server; something that can be quite costly given the high costs associated with purchasing high end servers. This can be an issue especially if your company is just starting up and needs to conserve on cash. Another thing is that you need to take care of delivery charges and hardware maintenance on your own. Your hosting provider can help you in case of hardware failure but you would need to shell out money to resolve hardware issues.

Even though there are some issues with a using a colocation hosting plan, the advantages of using this type of a plan in certain situations cannot be ignored. Hence, it can be said that a colocation hosting plan is a great way to get a hosting plan that is custom made for your website or online business.

If you are the owner of a business, you would surely understand how important it is for your business to have an online presence in an era where each and every business is connected to clients via the internet. But when starting an online operation the first thing that would need to take into consideration would be the type of hosting service that would be used to host your website. Although there are several different options available in the market, one of the cheapest, easy to set up and maintain plan is of shared web hosting.

A shared web hosting service is hosting plan wherein your website is hosted on a server that is shared by several other users at the same time. You might think having such a plan is unfruitful as other users might not let your website use any resources, leading to a very bad service. But this is not the case, a shared server hosting plan is in fact a great option for startups who are low on cash as this plan is one of the cheapest plan available in the market.

In a shared hosting plan, each user on the same server has a separate hosting account through which he or she can manage the workings of his or her website. These days hosting providers offer a wide number of features and services with shared hosting accounts. These include separate control panels, unlimited email accounts, unlimited databases, unlimited sub domains, unlimited number of websites, etc.

The biggest advantage of using a shared server hosting plan is the cost. Shared hosting plans are the cheapest hosting solutions available in the market and offer services that are enough to set up and run websites which can support a considerable amount of traffic too. Shared server hosting plans are great for running small and medium sized websites and generally provide features that are offered by costlier plans. Not only, this shared plans are used by startups who are testing the working of your website before moving on to large hosting plans. Another thing is that shared hosting plans can be very easily scaled up for engaging more users and visitors.

But there are some issues too. One of the biggest issue is of security. Since several users are using the same server to host their websites, it might be possible to access the data stored by other users on the same server. Not only this, there might be times when the performance of your website might be compromised on account of high usage of server resources by other websites hosted on the same server. Also with a shared hosting plan, your site might go down (become unavailable) if there is a rush of visitors to your website all of a sudden.

Although there are some problems with using a shared hosting plan, the advantages of using such a plan outnumber the problems. Hence, it can be said that shared server hosting solutions are a great option for websites that are just starting their operations or are yet to receive considerable amount of traffic.

There are several different types of hosting solutions available in the market these days from shared hosting plans for small online applications to dedicated hosting solutions for large websites. But there is one plan that is different from the rest and provides a kind of service that is unmatched at the same level of prices. That hosting service is of virtual private server hosting.

A virtual private server solution is a hosting plan wherein a server is divided into virtual serves by making use of a virtualization software and each virtual server is used as a separate hosting account. This means that each user of a virtual private server hosting plan has at his or her a complete web server at a cost that is only fractionally higher than the cost of having a shared hosting plan.

The advantage of using a virtual private server for your website is that you have access to a service that is somewhat like a dedicated server hosting solution at a cost that is a fraction of the cost of real dedicated server plan. Not only this, just like a dedicated server hosting account, in case of a virtual server hosting solution you have complete access to the resources of your server. This means that you have the choice of allocating the resources that have been assigned to you in the manner you want. Apart from this you also have the option to install any software application that you deem fit on your server.

Another thing with a virtual private server hosting solution is that most of the hosting providers these days offer 24/7 unlimited phone based technical support with such plans. This ensures that you get a better service than the subscribers of a shared hosting plan and have better control and access over your server.

Also, in case of virtual server hosting since resources have been assigned to you and no one else can use the resources which have been dedicated to you, your website is never bogged down by any other website on the same server which is hogging all the resources, something that is common in case of shared hosting plan.

Virtual server hosting plans are generally delineated from one another on the basis of a few key benchmark items such as physical memory, disk space, bandwidth and CPU allocation. Most of the virtual private server plans offer memory in the range of 512 MB to 4 GB. Also when it comes to the disk space being offered, there are providers which offer as much as 40 GB of disk space. The bandwidth allocated to your server is another thing that needs to be taken into consideration. There are several hosting providers which offer unlimited bandwidth these days, but you do not need to understand whether the plans being offered are truly unlimited or not.

In case of CPU allocation, you can either go in for a guarantee core plan, MHz/GHz allocation plan, a fair CPU share plan or a vCPU plan. The needs of your website are the core determinants of which plan options you need to go in for.

Virtual private servers are a great option of hosting websites that have outgrown a shared hosting plan but are not large enough to be allocated a dedicated server plan. Virtual private servers offer the kind of service that you require at a price that is quite low. The only thing that you need to remember is to buy a plan from a hosting provider that is reliable and trustworthy and everything would turn out to be fine.

A colocation hosting plan is a hosting solution wherein you have to buy your own server and send it to a colocation provider so that it can be connected to the internet. In this type of a plan you are not required to pay the server rental charges, instead you are required to pay only for the rack space that is being used by your server. But, the problem with using a colocation hosting provider is that it is very difficult to find out which provider is offering a better service. This is why you need to take into account the following things before selecting a colocation hosting provider.

Proximity to you:
Although, this might not be that necessary but if your colocation provider is located close to you then this might prove to be advantageous for you. Why? One, because you would be able to inspect the facility of your colocation provider before using its services. Two, the cost of mailing your server to your colocation provider would be much lower for you. Three, you would get better connectivity for remote access to your server i.e. your ping time to your server would be small.

Pricing of plans:
Another thing that you need to consider while choosing a colocation provider is the cost of service involved. You need to be sure about the pricing before making a commitment to a colocation hosting provider. Also you need to be sure about the features which are being offered to you for a given price and whether availing extra services would entail more fee or not.

Reputation of the provider:
The reputation of a colocation provider among clients shows how good the service, which they are offering, is. You check whether your colocation provider is reputed or not by talking to people who have used the services of that provider and by reading genuine reviews written by the people who have actually been the clients of the provider. Also, what you can do is visit the hosting providers’ premises and see whether the provider has a facility that matches the description given by the provider on its website.

Features:
There are a few features that your colocation hosting provider must provider. These include 24/7 365 days a year customer support, control panels for server management, data backups, network security. Apart from these, some other features which might come in handy include key card server access, CCTV security for your server, redundant power supply, etc.

Possibility to scale up:
Another thing that you need to ensure is that your hosting provider should offer you the ability to scale up your operations. This way you would not have to change plans or shift colocation provider once you outgrow your current resources and need more servers to keep up and maintain your website or online business.

These are some of the things which need to be considered while selecting a colocation provider. A colocation hosting solution is a great plan for companies looking to use servers that are customized with regards to the kind of website that is going to be run. By using the services of a colocation provider, these companies can provide the kind of service they are looking to provide to their visitors without going into the complexities of having their own data centers.

Reseller web hosting is a hosting plan wherein you have the option of splitting up the resources allocated to your account and then reselling those resources to third party clients. This means that you have the option of using your hosting account to offer hosting services to other people. A reseller hosting business is an online web hosting business where you make use of reseller hosting accounts to sell hosting services to the people.

The advantage of such a business is that you do not have to spend money on the hardware as well as the network infrastructure; all you need to do is purchase a reseller hosting account service and use it to sell hosting space and bandwidth. Another advantage is that you do not have to worry about server maintenance and network management. All that is done by the seller of the reseller hosting account; all you need to worry about is getting more clients and servicing those clients.

Reseller hosting businesses are generally run by middle parties such as web developers and people not so proficient in server management and network management. Web developers make use of reseller accounts to host websites that they are developing for their clients. On the other hand, sellers use reseller accounts to provide hosting services to people and third parties.

Now, there are few things that you ought to keep in mind while starting your own reseller hosting business. These things include:

Setting up a company:
The first thing that you need to do is incorporate a legal company. This needs to be done so as to have an identity for your business. For this you might need to consult your attorney and your tax advisor.

Buy a reseller plan:
The next thing that you need to do is purchase a reseller plan from a hosting provider. The selection of the hosting provider needs to be done on the basis of various criteria’s such as reliability of the host, customer support, features offered, price and performance, etc.

Customize and set up account:
The next thing that you need to do is customize your reseller account to reflect the name of your hosting company. You also need to set up the billing system and the client management system. Apart from this you need to brand your private name servers in accordance with the brand name of your company.

Get clients:
The next thing to do is promote your business and get clients for your business. You also need to bill clients and assign them resources and manage any customer support issues at the same time.

Customer support:
Another thing that you would have to do while running a reseller business is handle client problems and issues. For this you need to know a thing or two about web hosting. Also you need to have 24/7 customer support from your reseller hosting provider so that you can provide your clients with immediate solutions to their problems.

These are the steps which can be used to start your own reseller hosting business. If these steps are taken into consideration, then there is nothing that can stop your business from growing and flourishing.

If you are one of those guys who is looking to start a web hosting business without investing a lot of money, then reseller hosting is something that you need to look at. But, in order to buy a reseller hosting plan you need to find a reliable reseller hosting provider, which is in fact a problem in itself. the This is due to the fact that a large number of reseller hosting providers are present in the market with each offering services that are quite similar to the kind of service offered by the others. This makes it difficult to take a decision with regards to which provider is offering a better service. So how can one go about choosing the right reseller hosting provider? Well, here are some pointers which might help you focus in the right direction.

Your requirements:
The first and the foremost thing that you ought to look at is what your requirements are? If you are a developer looking to host third party sites all by yourself, then you need to take the number of clients you have into account while getting a reseller account. And in case you are looking to start your own web hosting business, then you need to look at how many accounts can be sold by you while purchasing a reseller hosting account. You need to understand the fact that if you identify your requirements in the initial stages, you won’t end up regretting the decisions you have made later on.

Service guarantee:
Most of the hosting providers offer a service guarantee when you buy a hosting plan from them. This guarantee comes in the form of an uptime guarantee, which is generally that you would get a 99.99% uptime on your reseller hosting account. You should always check whether a hosting provider offers this guarantee before buying any hosting plans from that provider. This way you would be sure that the hosting services that would be given to you would be reliable.

Customer support:
Never buy a reseller hosting plan from a web host which does not offer a 24/7 customer and technical support. This is due to the fact that with a reseller hosting account you are offering hosting services to your clients who would not want any downtime on their websites just because you have run into some problems with your reseller hosting account and are not being able to access customer support services. Always remember that if you do not offer a reliable service you are going to lose your customers and a 24/7 customer support with your reseller account enables you to maintain the kind of rapport that you need to maintain with your clients.

Additional features:
While purchasing a reseller hosting plan, you need to ensure that your provider offers you services such as free client management and billing software, WHM control panels, private nameservers, dedicated support, static IP addresses, etc. This is because all these things are required to run a reseller web hosting service efficiently and effectively. Hence, you need to ensure that these services are being provided before getting an account with a hosting provider.

These are a few things which if taken into consideration can help you find the reseller hosting solutions provider for yourself.