finding a good web host
bmgleason asked:


I am creating a website for a non-profit organization. Is there anywhere that I can get a free domain name and/or web hosting. Also, are there any resources for where I would be able to find a web developer willing to help me design a webpage for free considering it’s a nonprofit? I know about geocities, googlepages, etc. - I don’t like them. I need a professional looking webpage.
web hosting
Web Hosting asked:


As per study conducted by the Forrester Research, the current market is an ideal one for the emergence new web hosting companies, currently there is “positive — if modest — growth for Web hosting and managed IT services, at both the enterprise and SMB levels.”

It is an ideally suited business if one indulges as a web designer or rather IT consultant. This business suits best for small consulting firms. Now the question arises why to ignore such services which several small businesses potentially require? Hosting is a supreme source of revenue on monthly basis.

If one talks about the flourishing sectors of Internet then name of hosting industry will be among one of them. Several corporations such as Yahoo are in the race of providing web hosting services. Anyone who wishes to join this highly profitable business is always welcome and has the right to grab his/her financial share, except when he/she can rightly perform his/her duty.

For a dream web hosting company, one should adopt two tested and wrathful rules as mentioned below:

1.) The prime aspect of the user should be on offering high-quality services in a two-tiered pricing schedule.

2.) The user should know about the importance of an automated infrastructure for development of self-sufficient customers. In the case of marketing, it is very important for the user to increase the chances of accurate opportunities.

The facility of automation will not only enhance the self-sufficiency of the client but also will reduce the expenses of the user to a low level. For the purpose of giving level best services, the prime thing which user requires is at least the following processes to be automated:

1.) Order forms (in case of new customer account set up or existing customer updates),

2.) Billing system,

3.) Administration system,

4.) End-user control panel, and

5.) Technical support interface.

Order Forms:

It is mandatory that the front end of user’s order form should provide a minimum of the four key functional aspects given below:

a.) It should ensure the information of domain for registration purposes,

b.) It should legalize entered results,

c.) It should provide the facility to process the customer’s credit card or else provide creation of an invoice,

d.) It should register customer’s information into billing database for the future prospects.

It is must that the backend of the order form must process the domain registration, in case it is required by the customer and should generate the Web hosting account.

Administration System

One should know that the administration system is quite an essential factor in the purpose of managing ordered accounts. The user might require manually adding or eliminating several new domains, change passwords, etc.

End-User Control Panel

If one wants his/her customer should manage his/her account, then an end-user control panel is necessary. At the end, the customers should be in the condition where they can set up their own e-mail accounts, view Website statistics and can manage files etc.

Billing System

Another very important thing is the presence of automated billing system. The billing system should not only perform the functions like making e-mail invoices, charging credit cards, suspend overdue accounts etc, but should also enable user to issue credit or discounts as per requirement.

Technical Support Interface

There is a wrong opinion that technical support interface is merely a system that generates trouble rather it is an effective tech-support interface that automatically generates an FAQ-interface that customers can look out for before submitting trouble tickets. The advantage of these interfaces is that they can reduce technical support requests by a factor of 10.

Not only that, the company with which the user go with offers the option of taking care of technical support on his/her behalf but branded with user’s brand. Thus one can concentrate his/her potential on other parts of his/her business which requires greater attention.

How to maximize good marketing opportunities

If one knows about what platform to use, what packages to offer and set up a tiered pricing schedule and automated systems. So now how one does maximizes good marketing opportunities through new hosting service?

Pay per Click

This facility allows user to reach to a large segment of customers. In this case although one needs not to pay to list his/her site, he/she does pay when a customer clicks on one’s listing and connects to user’s site. Now an important question arises in one’s mind i.e. how does one gets his/her site high on the results lists? One option is user must engage in a bidding war over how much he/she is willing to pay for each person who clicks through to his/her site. Recently the prices of bidding have grown too high, so one needs to act careful. There are cases where one clicks into one’s site but didn’t convert into a new account. Thus, one needs to be sure to just select targeted keywords and not contending with everyone else for the same keywords. It is not at all an easy game, so one should find his/her role.

How to host Directory Sites?

There are plentiful Web sites known as hosting directories that intend to attract Web hosting customers. The utility of these directories lies in the fact that they are an excellent place to advertise, but one needs to be selective in his/her placement. There are several sites offering banner placement, spotlights, search enhancements, and other forms of advertisement. A key tip in this case would be one should always keep in mind that banner ads are considered much better for building brand recognition rather than generating new accounts, so one should advertise based on his/her budget, and should not just focus on his/her expectation for new customers.

How to influence current Client Base?

If one is running an established Web design firm, information portal, or domain registration service, he/she can quickly start marketing to his/her current clients. For him/her its not easy to generate clients as by sending a simple e-mail to his/her current customer base he/she can immediately generate a large number of accounts. Talking about marketing strategies, there are permission-based email marketing services that work best for earning more revenue from one’s current customers and gaining additional customers. Thus, one should try a free trial of one or more of these services to find one that works well for his/her needs.

How to retain customers?

One should always keep in mind that in order to retain his/her customer; one has to develop and offer new products and services and to make them feel better. This will not only help in retaining customers but also to generate additional revenue. But the most important factor is quality should not be compromised as it is in reality a key to success.

finding a good web host
Drifter asked:


For every webhost there are complains for lies (unlimited space and bandwidth) or sites not being online or slow.

Plus: you don’t know what to believe when you read the forums because they own them, they post the good comments and their rivals post the bad comments
“Take you” what the heck are you talking about kid? That’s how you become a top contributor, you answer without thinking.

Jul
04
Filed Under (Web Hosting) by admin
finding a good web host
Web Hosting asked:


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.

.

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.

choosing a web host
Menelas asked:


So, I got my domain at bluehost.com
And they offer all these different kind of services..

Now, what do I do next, so I can build my website?