The one who wants to enter in this web world and desires for a long time survival, then he/she should be familiar with each and every terminology used in this field. If user considers all the important factors before choosing a hosting plan then only he/she will be able to have a successful future in this world .User should not choose any of the plan, rather he/she should opt the best and most suitable one and this can only be made possible by fetching more and more informations and also by studying properly all the requirements. New comers should start from the basics .They should learn the meaning of each and every term used and also in addition those factors that can affect his/her selection.

Web Host

Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as ‘web server’. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.

The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.

There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:

1. Free Hosts:

The users who are not professional but are making website only as a hobby then for them free hosting can be a good option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the user’s domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.

2. Shared Hosts:

The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility. No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.

3. Dedicated Hosts:

The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to create as many websites as they like. Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.

4. Collocated Hosts:

Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.

5. Reseller Hosts:

In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.

6. Other Hosts:

Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.

Domain Name

Domain name is the name which shows the place where one’s website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is easier than recalling the IP addresses.

Space / Storage

Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very important role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases. Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month can be easily available.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who don’t want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.

Server Type

Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.

Databases

As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.

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Server Side Scripting

Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmaster’s requirements. However PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.

Email

Now the next very important aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can move further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is planning to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts totally depends on the hosting plan one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as big plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.

Control Panel

Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some important functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.

Uptime

Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with excellent features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will think twice before visiting it. In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very important feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.

Price

Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a great variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices ranging from 0 to $1000 per month. For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterwards.



By: Web Hosting

About the Author:

Are you looking for a reliable web hosting company to get your business website online? If so, you should know that besides the common features which all web hosting companies provide for their customers, an ecommerce web host must offer two additional important features. These two features are mentioned below:

Shopping cart:  With Shopping Cart, you can accept PayPal® and credit cards via your site. This software allows online shopping customers to place items in the cart. 

SSL Certificate: People are getting smart about online security. Today most of them are looking for the padlock icon and “https” prefix in the address bar of their browser before submitting personal information online. An SSL Certificate helps your customers do their online transactions under a secure service. If your Web site doesn’t have an SSL Certificate, visitors may leave before making a purchase or creating an account.  

Take into consideration that web hosting is a global service. It does not matter what country you are located in; US, UK, Canada, Australia or India. It is good to note that the cost of hosting services in most countries is generally a little more expensive in comparison to the same services in Canada and the United States. Specifically, American web hosts offer a much better value for money than any local hosting.  

Threehosts.com is a reliable website to help you make the best choice. Their experts have been evaluating business web hosting service providers for years, and now they provide you with the most reliable results.  There you can reach the three reputable companies that are leaders in the E-commerce web hosting industry. They fulfill all your requirements to sell online or do any online transaction via your website. By using each of them, everything you need for your business website is provided in one eCommerce Hosting Package.

http://www.threehosts.com/commerce



By: FCJ Oghab

About the Author:

The most well-known tools of the trade are usually popular for a reason: it’s because they address the needs of professionals across a broad spectrum. This is why when you hear someone recommend a particular software, you know this software is worth trying out. For resellers, the buzz around town is “WHM reseller hosting.” And for a good reason!

WHM reseller hosting offers a more simplified way of managing different hosting accounts. WHM, or Web Hosting Manager, is a tool that usually comes bundled in with cPanel, a popular hosting web panel. cPanel is a proprietary program developed and distributed by cPanel.net, which also designed and continually develops WHM.

If you were a webmaster before you gained an interest in breaking into the reseller business, you may have heard of cPanel before WHM. The popularity of the cPanel web panel simply cannot be denied: many web hosts choose to make cPanel available to all their resellers and end users because of the software’s many virtues. Ease of use is perhaps the biggest reason why this particular web panel software is so popular, but security and user-friendliness are others.

And because WHM comes bundled up with the cPanel program, WHM also becomes a popular choice by association. Just as cPanel is easy to use for resellers and end users alike, when they have to change the settings of the web space that has been assigned to them, WHM proves to be easy to use in managing user accounts. WHM is only available to resellers; if you have purchased web space that comes with a WHM functionality, chances are you have purchased a reseller hosting account.

Other web panels come with their own versions of user management software. WHM is unique to cPanel. You can expect the same security and ease of use from WHM as you can from cPanel, which is to say a lot of it! Security cannot be underplayed when you’re selling web space. If you wish for people to appreciate the features you have installed into your reseller accounts, one of the things you have to emphasize in your marketing pitches is security.

Choosing a WHM reseller hosting account would make it much easier for you as the vendor to market your web space primarily on the “ease of use” platform. If you should happen to be a reseller who wants to market for other resellers – and this could happen, because the need for smaller and cheaper web space just doesn’t end! – make sure that you are also able to furnish your sub-resellers with WHM functionalities.



By: Trevor Mulholland

About the Author:

Are you looking for a reliable web hosting company to get your business website online? If so, you should know that besides the common features which all web hosting companies provide for their customers, an ecommerce web host must offer two additional important features. These two features are mentioned below:

Shopping cart:  With Shopping Cart, you can accept PayPal® and credit cards via your site. This software allows online shopping customers to place items in the cart. 

SSL Certificate: People are getting smart about online security. Today most of them are looking for the padlock icon and “https” prefix in the address bar of their browser before submitting personal information online. An SSL Certificate helps your customers do their online transactions under a secure service. If your Web site doesn’t have an SSL Certificate, visitors may leave before making a purchase or creating an account.  

Take into consideration that web hosting is a global service. It does not matter what country you are located in; US, UK, Canada, Australia or India. It is good to note that the cost of hosting services in most countries is generally a little more expensive in comparison to the same services in Canada and the United States. Specifically, American web hosts offer a much better value for money than any local hosting.  

Threehosts.com is a reliable website to help you make the best choice. Their experts have been evaluating business web hosting service providers for years, and now they provide you with the most reliable results.  There you can reach the three reputable companies that are leaders in the E-commerce web hosting industry. They fulfill all your requirements to sell online or do any online transaction via your website. By using each of them, everything you need for your business website is provided in one eCommerce Hosting Package.

http://www.threehosts.com/commerce



By: FCJ Oghab

About the Author:

What can be the relation between internet and different web-hosting services? Talking in scientific language one can say that, demand for different web-hosting services is directly proportional to expansion of internet. Persons related to business or organization increases by the day on the internet. There are several people who do not bear to spend much money on their web site, however, if the site is meant for important purpose, then ignorance of quality can be harmful.

Taking an example, dealing with a cheap web host can lead to slow assess of site. It happens with several surfers on broadband connections who get irritated with such sort of problem. If a site does not offer fast access and downloads, it is a waste for the visitors. It not only leads to financial loss but also delivers an undesirable publicity of worthless site.

One cannot deny the fact that, a well-established web host can demand extra money but the services would be worth it. There are also few high quality hosts in the market which even proposes free add-ones and promotions to the users. Features like free web site builder or support for MySQL databases which user enjoy ensures him/her that he/she is not at the loosing side in terms of cost. A cheap host cannot provides a user these facilities and if yes then not without extra money.

It is also a universal truth that cheapest web hosts may not have a good repute every time, either. It is not a mere play, to start a web hosting business. It requires proper network, well-established infrastructure for guaranteed satisfaction to client. There is less probability of frequent down times in server and quitting the business at any time!!

Hence, host’s status, quality and price all three are important for a successful search. However, few web hosts offer the client both outstanding services as well as nominal prices due to stiff competition in the market. Thus, user should know that he/she is precious and ultimate in the market.



By: Web Hosting

About the Author:

This article is useful for understanding the hosting industry and studies its dynamics to know what to look for before selecting a web host.

Firstly it is good to have a proper introduction of web hosting chain. It is termed as chain because here about 3 upstream providers serve the end consumer. First the web-hosting provider, who is in direct contact, then comes the web host’s upstream company who maintains the servers and sells space to web hosts, and above that, the data center that serves the purpose of providing the connection and houses the servers. There are some web hosts who act as the server administrator and liase with the data centers directly.

The growth of the web hosting industry in at saturation point due to the presence of hundreds of web-hosting providers claiming to provide cheaper and better services to businesses and individuals. The reason for this is the availability of resources in abundance and at cheaper costs with reducing disk space and data-transfer prices. Its easy to enter the web hosting business as there are large resellers of server space providing cheap hosting and reselling plans that provides ground to incomers to join the business.

Due to growing number of suppliers with cheaper reselling plans, more and more web hosting businesses are coming up providing web-hosting solutions to business and individual websites due to lower fixed costs and investment. Not only that this increase in supply is not caused by factors in any particular country. As Internet is not limited to the boundary of any country so the data centers present in any part of the world can easily provide the servers and web space for a local hosting company. Due to Internet it is easy to communicate to each other and providers can easily exchange their services in the global space.

Maintaining a proper balance between supply and demand is quite good for the customers. But imbalance has forced several new web-hosting providers to offer extremely low prices for their web hosting plans or packages in order to make them self stand in the tough market. Now it’s time for customers to choose the hosting providers having lowered prices from the vast number of providers.

However, continuous decrease in prices is quite disadvantageous for both the providers as well as the customers. By reduces prices, companies are able to earn nominal profit and are even not able to cover their support costs. Customers suffer by getting less support with their web-hosting accounts. It’s quite obvious if the profits do not justify the costs, web-hosting companies will easily close down and takes their clients’ sites with them.

The following are the factors to consider while choosing a web-hosting provider: -

The most important factor to consider is Support for any individual or small business looking for a web host for their websites. The Internet web-hosting provider who is unable to provide the facility of responding to emails within 24 hours is probably having problems providing fast and reliable support services. One can’t ignore the validity of these services especially for the beginners who needs guidance with publishing their websites on the web hosting account provided. The success of any web hosting business depends upon the relationships between web host and web hosting customers. To make business success, provider should be able to provide services when and where required also its crucial for customers to know when their site is going offline for sake of maintenance.

After support next important factor is Stability. It refers to how much uptime one can expect from the web-hosting provider, which in turn depends upon the providers’ servers and network. If the providers are not having reliable and stable providers, it would affect their servers and cause problems for the website. It is must to have an uptime of about 99.5% in the industry, as there are other external factors, which may be beyond control of the provider.

Third factor to consider is Cost which depends on the purpose of the website and budget. The budget may be smaller in case of Personal /Individual websites and so they opt to go with a cheaper web hosting provider, possibly in exchange for support and stability. But in case of business sites as they need better stability and support they opt for expensive host providers. It is most often observed that cheap web hosting providers are able to attract customers in the beginning by offering low prices but afterwards fails in providing quality support to their customers thereby creating problems for them. Also the large numbers of client sites cause sustained high server loads which leads to server crash thus hampering stability.

Another factor, which is not so important, is Location of the server. It is not considered important as it depends upon a user’s ISP/country’s connection to the data center where the server is located. Pings to the server normally tells the network latency to expect when people can access to one’s site. Lower ping rates leads to loading of site faster.

Last but not least one should take time to identify and contact a web host to check their service. This helps in providing an idea of the kind of support that one might receive and helps in deciding the reliability of the provider.



By: Host Gator

About the Author:

Are you looking for a reliable web hosting company to get your business website online? If so, you should know that besides the common features which all web hosting companies provide for their customers, an ecommerce web host must offer two additional important features. These two features are mentioned below:

Shopping cart:  With Shopping Cart, you can accept PayPal® and credit cards via your site. This software allows online shopping customers to place items in the cart. 

SSL Certificate: People are getting smart about online security. Today most of them are looking for the padlock icon and “https” prefix in the address bar of their browser before submitting personal information online. An SSL Certificate helps your customers do their online transactions under a secure service. If your Web site doesn’t have an SSL Certificate, visitors may leave before making a purchase or creating an account.  

Take into consideration that web hosting is a global service. It does not matter what country you are located in; US, UK, Canada, Australia or India. It is good to note that the cost of hosting services in most countries is generally a little more expensive in comparison to the same services in Canada and the United States. Specifically, American web hosts offer a much better value for money than any local hosting.  

Threehosts.com is a reliable website to help you make the best choice. Their experts have been evaluating business web hosting service providers for years, and now they provide you with the most reliable results.  There you can reach the three reputable companies that are leaders in the E-commerce web hosting industry. They fulfill all your requirements to sell online or do any online transaction via your website. By using each of them, everything you need for your business website is provided in one eCommerce Hosting Package.

http://www.threehosts.com/commerce



By: FCJ Oghab

About the Author: