Using Managed Web Hosting to Boost Productivity

Building and operating professional looking websites is not an easy task, especially when you have several websites to take care of. The goal of every online business owner is to continually expand their business to diversify revenue streams and build a formidable online empire. To do this, every bit of energy must be put towards a focused effort to minimize manual work, and maximize business productivity. There are many ways to reduce the workload you place on yourself and your employees, however most of these methods focus on automating and simplifying tasks using software or outsourcing of some kind. Many people don't realize that much of their current workload can be reduced simply by optimizing their services to accommodate their business needs.

Simplifying Web Hosting

Online business owners spend a great deal of their time browsing through their web hosting control panel and making all of the necessary adjustments to keep their site running smoothly. For this reason, it is absolutely imperative to keep the amount of time and work spent on managing the web server to a minimum. This is especially true for an individual that is not completely familiar with web server administration. If you fall under this category then you may want to consider purchasing a managed web hosting account.

Managed Hosting Support

Perhaps one of the most desirable aspects of managed web hosting is the integrated support that you will receive when opting for a managed web hosting plan. Managed web hosting plans give the user the ability to relax while a paid system administrator deals with the server administration duties. This means the user will no longer need to worry about the hassle of updating server software, configuring the server for optimal performance, or any of the other headaches that usually come along with the responsibilities of managing a web server.

Selecting a Managed Hosting Plan

While it may seem as if any managed hosting plan would be a wise decision, you should consider the fact that not all managed hosting plans are the same. In fact, the main d ifference between each managed hosting account is the amount of managing that is done for the user. All managed hosting plans comes with a dedicated server, which means the user will have access to plenty of server resources. However, each plan has different qualifications for what is deemed managed and unmanaged. It is important to inquire with all prospective web hosting companies to find out how much of the server administration will be left to you and your employees. If you are looking for a completely automated solution then you will need to make sure your web hosting company understands this before signing up for a web hosting account.

Conclusion

While it may be in your best interest to elect a web hosting solution that accommodates your needs while minimizing the amount of work on your behalf, you also need to understand that control is important. Look for a managed web hosting plan that allows for relaxed responsibility, competent support and complete control.

source from http://webhostingrating.com/hosting-guide/managed-hosting/using-managed-web-hosting-to-boost-productivity/

Are the Internet and the WWW the same?


If you hang around computer users enough, you may hear one of them refer to the Internet and the World Wide Web interchangeably. Although the Internet and the WWW work together, they certainly aren't one in the same, and I'll tell you why.

The Internet is a framework. It's a monstrous, world wide network of networks. It is a means to facilitate communication from user to user throughout the world. In reality, the Internet itself is nothing more than a dumb behemoth. To communicate, the Internet needs something with brains to power those facilities. Think of the Internet as a bridge across a river. The bridge itself doesn't drive cars across it. People do. The same concept applies to the web. The Internet itself can't power communication; rather, protocols do.

The World Wide Web, or WWW, provides a mechanism to view information sent over the Internet and works on top of the Internet. It was developed by a guy named Tim Berners-Lee at CERN Labs. The World Wide Web uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or HTTP, as its set of rules for communication, and utilizes display applications like web browsers to make information readable. Information intended for web browsers use a scripting language that web browsers can read. That scripting language is known as Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML.

For example, you are reading this web page through a web browser. The web browser functions within the World Wide Web to interpret its HTML, and the World Wide Web uses the Internet as a means to successfully communicate.

The World Wide Web is not the only communication mechanism that uses the Internet. Email, for example, does. Email also uses a set of rules to communicate. Its set of rules is called the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP. SMTP accesses the Internet and places email messages on it for transferring. Mail messages are received by a user's computer and displayed through an email application, like Microsoft Outlook, or even a web page, like Hotmail or Yahoo.

Usenet, FTP and instant messengers (like AOL Instant Messenger, or ICQ) also use the Internet for communication. They all use a set of rules, called protocols, to govern the information transfer. The Internet handles hoards of information each and every day, ranging from WWW information to email traffic, to instant messages and Usenet sessions.

You should now know the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web. The Internet is nothing more than a large network that facilitates communication, and the World Wide Web is a mechanism for information display and organization. You may correct those misguided Internet users now, politely and intelligently

source from http://www.web-page-hosting-review.com/articles27.html

The More Things Change, the More They Stay a Pain


Even the most unskilled businessperson knows instinctively the old adage that it is "location, location, location" that is most important when reaching one's target customer base. Why then, do so many companies ignore this concept when building their eBusiness? Fundamental business practices are strikingly similar for both bricks-and-mortar and virtual storefronts. The only difference is that an eBusiness exists on the virtual "lot" of a Web host. Choosing the wrong host for your eBusiness can be as damaging as attempting to open a baby-goods store next to a brothel.

Much has been written on the methodology of choosing the right Web host for your business. But what happens when you want to move to another - hopefully superior - hosting company? Just as a decline in local income, a rising crime rate, or limited space in the face of corporate expansion will cause a bricks-and-mortar business to move to another location, an eBusiness will sometimes need to find another virtual lot to set up shop in.

Why would you want to make such a move? As always, it's an issue of expansion of business or reduction of service. Perhaps your store has outgrown the meager resources of that small, inexpensive hosting company that was such a godsend when you were working out of your basement. Or maybe a recent merger has caused the service agreement to change in a detrimental way. The worst-case scenario - your host is going out of business - will definitely necessitate a move.

The assumption is that many eCommerce professionals are too complacent, and are unwilling to make such a large, fundamental change to their business. However, this complacency is well founded, as changing your Web hosting service can be a long and complicated process. This is especially true for an e-tail site, since the store's software, catalog, customer database and Web commerce server needs to be moved as well - all without causing an instant of disruption to the day-to-day transactions and sales of the company.

In general, however, you can make the process relatively effortless as long as you take some preemptive steps:
Make sure you've already secured the services of the new host.
Ensure that you have access to your existing scripts and data.
Resolve any issues that may surround your domain name with the move.
While the temptation may be to rush through the change in order to move and resecure your site as quickly as possible, if you don't take the time to choose the right provider, you could experience similar problems down the road - which will necessitate another move!


eCommerce sites in particular have some special issues to address when choosing a new host:

Ensure that the eCommerce package your business is using is supported by the new host, unless you wish to redo the entire architecture of your storefront.
If your store runs on CGI scripts, you must find a host that supports these. Even so, leave some extra time, as your scripts will probably still have to be amended to reflect the new server environment.
If your business is running on a single-source eCommerce solution (such as Yahoo! Store), then be prepared to leave time for a major overhaul, as you will have to select and configure a new eCommerce package.
The next major hurdle is the transfer of data to your new host. Obviously, in order to do this, you will need to have access to your current data and scripts. Ideally, you will be able to download these from your existing host, but issues of propriety, or your host going out of business can make this problematic. The best solution is to always maintain a local, updated copy of this info, as your most valuable asset as an eBusiness is your customer, sales, and product data.


The issue of you domain should be the easiest step. Your new host should be able to give you the nameserver information, which you then pass on to your domain name authority. It's best to do this on a Friday, as it will probably take about 72 hours to fully direct your current traffic to your new nameserver.

One obstacle you may encounter is that the naming authority will only accept change requests from the person listed as the administrative contact, so make sure your name is there and not the host's, for if you host goes out of business, this person might be impossible to track down.

Remember, the quality of your location will influence your customer's opinion. If your eBusiness is stuck in a bad neighborhood - it's time to move on!

source from http://www.web-page-hosting-review.com/articles18.html

Types of web hosting services

Not many peoples know about all types of web hosting services available today. Most of them, look for cheapest and most affordable hosting plan and basically pick a shared hosting plan.However, depends on customer (private person or business company) they should look for best fit, before anything else

So, here are all existing types of web hosting services:
•Shared Web Hosting
•Dedicated Web Hosting
•Colocation Web Hosting
•Reseller Web Hosting
•Virtual Dedicated hosting
•Managed Web Hosting
•Grid Hosting
•Exchange Hosting
•Domain Hosting
•Email Hosting
All these hosting types can be hosted on different operating systems ( aka "OS platforms")
•Linux or Unix Operating System
•Windows Server Operating System
Shared Web Hosting
This type of web hosting refers to a webhosting service where a lot of websites are located on one webserver (or sone hosting services on one machine). Each website has allocated its own resource (and directory) on the server to keep it separate from other sites with certain permissions. This is in general the most cheaper option for hosting as many customers share the overall cost of server and maintenance, but has a big disadvantage: one customer abuses the server resources, all other customers are highly affected, therefore is most difficult to be managed properly by hosting companies. This type of hosting is suitable for most of peoples which are having a small to medium traffic to their website (along email mailboxes, etc..). Most of hosting companies are very stricted on their TOS (Term of service) and they may shutdown your website in case overload the machine using too many resources. Hosting companies offers various control panels to manage this type of hosting

Dedicated Web Hosting
Dedicated service or dedicated server, is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an hole server not shared with anyone. This is more stable and flexible then shared web hosting, as customer have full control over the server, including choice of hardware and operating system. Server maintenance can be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service with extra cost. A dedicated server offer less overhead and a larger return on investment. Dedicated servers are most often housed in data centers and the price is a lot higher then shared hosting. In contrast to collocation, the server hardware is owned by the provider and in some cases they will provide support for your operating system or applications. This type of hosting is suitable for medium to big customers or companies, which are having websites with big traffic, uses many resources and also having their business depending by the Internet. Hosting companies offers at extra cost various control panels to manage this type of hosting

Home server is a dedicated hosting placed in a private residence and can be used to host one or more web sites from a usually consumer internet connection. These can be purpose-built machines fully managed by the home owner

Clustered hosting means having multiple dedicated servers hosting working in the same content for better resource utilization. Clustered Servers are a perfect solution for high-availability dedicated hosting, or creating a scalable web hosting solution. Can be used apart of separating resources (e.q: database on one machine, web on other machine

Colocation Web Hosting
Collocation center is a type of web hosting where customers are owning their server and use just the facility from data center providers. This means data center is providing their infrastructure for internet, AC, electricity etc. to colocate customers servers. In such cases the monthly cost is less, but the cost for servers is supported by customers. This is option to use for people they need physical access to the server hardware. Colocation has its charms, but it is especially useful for mission critical online applications, not just simple web pages.

Reseller Web Hosting
This a form of web hosting where the account owner has the ability to use his allotted hard drive space and bandwidth (basically all hosting resources) to host other customers websites like being a hosting provider. The reseller purchases like a big hosting plan and then sells them to customers as smaller parts. A certain portion of hard drive and bandwidth is allocated to the reseller account. The reseller can even rent a dedicated server from a hosting company or resell shared hosting services. In the latter case, the reseller is simply given the permission to sell a certain amount of disk space and bandwidth to his own customers without renting a server from a web hosting company he signed for a reseller account. One of the biggest issue for reseller hosting is the customer support. This customer support is "normally" intended to be delegated for reseller, but they ultimately have to contact the parent hosting company for issues which they cannot solve. Hosting companies offers various hosting control panels to manage this type of hosting, including billing support

Virtual Dedicated hosting
Called sometimes VDS (Virtual dedicated server), is a method of partitioning a physical server computer into multiple virtual servers such that each has the appearance and capabilities of running on its own dedicated machine. There are certain software already doing this job, like: Vmware or Virtuozzo. Each virtual server can run its own operating system (even Linux and Windows platforms), but each server is sharing the same physical resources. This type of hosting is better then sharing and worse then dedicated in quality and price, but there are several advantages for a datacenter to offer virtual dedicated hosting over dedicated hosting, like: server space (one machine can "serve" multiple servers), electricity and few other things. Hosting companies offers various control panels to manage this type of hosting

Managed Web Hosting
Managed Web Hosting is a type of dedicated hosting. Basically, there are two ways of dedicated hosting: unmanaged and managed. These two are in several ways similar to each other but also they differ in some ways. As opposed to unmanaged hosting, for managed hosting the hosting provider makes sure that everything works as it should, also when it comes to any software (OS standard or custom software)Managed hosting will be a smooth ride as you don't have to be a hosting expert when working with your site. The hosting provider is responsible for everything from software to equipment and maintenance. Managed Web Hosting has extra cost over unmanaged web hosting, but give's you ability to stay focused on using the applications installed on the machine instead of doing any work maintainance for the server.

Grid Hosting
Grid Hosting is a flexible web hosting platform that matches performance on demand. If they site traffic grows, Grid Hosting responds by allocating more resources and keeping your site live. If your site starts small, but is growing, Grid Hosting grows with it so you don't have to manually upgrade and experience any unnecessary downtime.Grid Hosting "pools" the web hosting resources of many hosting servers and your site's content resides on multiple servers. This networked system helps achieve a high reliability - beyond 99.9% for your Web site because if one server shuts down, only a fraction of the grid's resources are lost. Grid Hosting has resources in reserve which are always available to allocate when necessary.Compared with Shared Hosting, Grid Hosting offers increased availability and scalability. Shared Hosting can handle a limited amount of traffic, beyond which the site becomes unreachable. Grid Hosting responds to hight traffic by adding additional hosting resources to your site, keeping your site live regardless of traffic.
Due to differences in Grid Hosting, it cannot offer support for some of the technologies that Shared Hosting can:
* Access databases are not supported due to Access locking scheme which prevents concurrent usage from different processes.
* Front Page Server Extensions are not supported by some hosting providers.
* Java and ColdFusion may not be supported.
* Concurrent file writes to the same file in multiple sessions or concurrent threads. Example of affected resources: File-based databases and cross session log files (these issues are exaggerated in a Grid Hosting environment due to additional volume).
* Storing data within the Application namespace and depending on multiple concurrent sessions accessing accurate data for the entire application.
* Static Classes where sessions across the site (application) must have concurrent access to accurate data.

Exchange Hosting
Microsoft Exchange server is one of the most popular email and collaboration platform for business. It helps business better communicate with partners and customers, and increases employee productivity. However, building and managing an Exchange server environment is costly and complex. It requires a large investment in hardware, software, and technical expertise to install it, configure it, and manage it on a daily basis. Exchange hosting allows SMBs to enjoy all the productivity and collaborative benefits of Exchange, without any of the frustrations of managing it in-house.

Domain Hosting
In few words having just domain and some online tools to create some web pages. Can include tools to manage the DNS zone.

Email Hosting
An email web hosting service is an Internet web hosting service that runs just email servers (usually with a lot of features). Email hosting services offer premium email at a cost as opposed to advertising supported free email or webmail. Email web hosting services thus differ from typical end user email hosting providers such as webmail sites. They cater mostly to demanding email users and Small and Mid Size (SME) businesses, while larger enterprises usually run their own email hosting service. Email hosting providers allow for premium email services along with custom configurations and large number of accounts. In addition, hosting providers manage user's own domain name, including any email authentication scheme that the domain owner wishes to enforce in order to convey the meaning that using a specific domain name identifies and qualifies email senders.
Most email web hosting providers offer advanced premium email solutions hosted on dedicated custom email platforms. The technology and offerings of different email hosting providers can therefore vary with different needs. Email offered by most web hosting companies is usually more basic standardized POP3 based email and webmail based on open source webmail applications like Horde or Squirrelmail. Almost all webhosting providers offer standard basic email while not all email hosting providers offer web hosting.
source from http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-hosting/articles/article/9/types-of-web-hosting-services

Free Vs. Paid Web Hosting



With the growing number of free Web Hosting servives available on the Internet today, you may be asking yourself "Why should I pay for Web Hosting when I can get it for free?". This is actually a very good question and in the this article, I plan on evaluating the benefits of each type of Web Hosting.

Several free Web Hosting services include AvaFreeHost, Xoom, Hypermart, and GeoCities. Most offer varying degrees of flexability when it comes to setting up an account. For instance some give you the ability to have an actual domain name while most require that you have a sub domain under their primary domain, i.e. http://geocities/yourname/... Some also allow you to run your own CGI scripts while others do not. One thing almost all free Web Hosts have in common is that they provide only a limited amount of disk space (usually 5-10 MB), they are very strict when it comes to data transfer and they usually require that you have their ads on your Web Site.

One of the biggest compaints that users of free Web Hosting have is that they must often allow the Web Host to include banners or advertisements on their Web Sites. You've probably come accross a Hypermart or GeoCities Web Site and seen how an advertisement window pops up when you access the site. Many people find this annoying and want the freedom that paid Web Hosting allows.

Another big factor that often causes people to go in search of paid Web Hosting is the desire to have a domain name. Most free Web Hosting companies do not give you this opportunity. If you do have access to your own domain with a free Web Host, chances are that you will have to put up with advertisements on your Web Site.

Most companies that offer free Web Hosting also have strict limitations with regards to running and installing your own CGI scripts. Some will provide pre-installed scripts that you will have access to such as guestbooks, counters, or email form processors. However, if you want to test, install and run your own scripts, you will probably need to find a reliable paid Web Host. If this is a feature that you are interested in, be sure to ask any potential Web Host about their CGI script policies since they vary widely from company to company.

If you have a fairly large Web site or offer lots of graphics, free Web Hosting may present some problems for you. Most free Web Hosting companies have strict disk space limits, usually 5-10 MB or less. While this is plenty for most Web Sites, some may find this is not enough. Before signing up with any Hosting service, be sure to ask ask disk space limits and the policies invloved in increasing the alloted space.

Ultimately, the type of Web Hosting you choose depends on the specific needs of your Web Site. If you have a small personal Web Site and don't mind the ads and limititations that come with most free Web Hosting, then that may be the best choice for you. However, if you have a company or business, then you probably want your own domain name and that usually requires that you find paid Web Hosting.

source from http://www.web-page-hosting-review.com/articles2.html

Why Unlimited or Unmetered hosting packages are not possible?

There are hosts that offer unlimited bandwidth. What they mean is that they may not expect you to use more than a certain amount, as there are practical limits on most everything, including bandwidth. To claim unlimited is typically a marketing 'hook' to get you sign up. In reality, once you reach a certain limit, you will no doubt hear from this host to do something about this bandwidth consumption.

For example, it is as if you were to try to transfer multiple large files ( * > 1 GB ) on your home connection 24/7 for a whole month. The fact is it runs out somewhere.

Another marketing scheme is that of offering unmetered which says you can use however much the server would allow in a possible months cycle. Without a doubt the host will contact you or suspend your account.

There are some legit hosts that offer unlimited packages either as a marketing method to get their business noticed or promote it over another business. It is highly recommended that you look into your host before you sign up with them, ask them questions. If the host is really interested in you they would reply to your questions without a problem within 24 hours.

Even if you do not plan on using much space, keep in mind you are not the only one on that server and you will get other people abusing such a policy rendering you pretty much useless in the sense that you have only used a few megabytes of storage and some other person on the server is using gigabyte upon gigabyte.

Many hosts that offer unlimited or unmetered packages have fine print or policies that clearly state that if you use more than a certain percentage of the servers resources, you can be charged extra, you can be shut down, or any other consequences in relationship to resource usage. Be alert because this goes to show that the service is not unlimited and not unmetered. This can also hurt your reputation...


Also check around if you think a host is charging too little for too much. Sometimes it is a legit way for the host to get back on their feet sometimes it is the host out to get you. While the web hosting world is not full of sour apples it isn't exactly full of sweets either.

Some important factors to check on a host when planning to sign-up: Support, Support Response Time, Server Stability, Hosts willingness to assist you with extended issues, Server policies are also important, it shows that the host is willing to reject some customers to keep the server clean and free of any people that may cause problems with the server itself (spam, virus distributors etc)

There are some features that are allowed to be unlimited however because they are just a free service to the host anyway and are run server-side. Some of these are mailing lists, mail accounts, ftp accounts, sub-domains, and databases. Databases are limited however usually because they can be strenuous on the server and drop its stability and performance.

The best way to find the information about your host is ask around, ask the host questions, look for trial memberships, look for money back guarantees and testimonials.. although testimonials may be forged most hosts are pretty straightforward about it. Ask them questions pertaining to them and such.

As a Web Host myself I do look to help myself, but I also see other hosts suffering as a result as well and this is meant to support all web hosts out there, not just myself. Who you go with is strictly your own choice and you choose who you think is right.

If you have any questions, complaints, rants, or comments feel free to contact me at howard@scripthosters.net

Author: ScriptHosters.net Low Priced quality web Hosting

source from http://www.besthostratings.com/articles/Why_Unlimited_hosting.html

Choosing the Right Domain Name
So you've decided to put a web site up on the Internet. In this article, we will discuss the best way to choose a domain name for your business web site, but many of the same principles apply if you are choosing a name for a hobby or informational site. So, let's choose a name for your little piece of the Internet.

There are some blunders that people make while choosing a domain name for their site that inhibits its popularity. A good domain name of a site allows people to find your site easily on the Internet. The following would give a fairly good idea of what to avoid while choosing a domain name.

The basic mantra of naming your site is to avoid using numbers in your domain name. Many of the websites on the Internet use numbers either to save letters or to seem different. As an example, a person might name his or her website as www.fun4pets.com for a pet-related website. People who wish to access this site would have to make sure whether the 4 in this domain name is a number or the words
'for' or 'four'. This is how confusing it can get.

Avoid hyphens. It is not advisable to use hyphens in a domain name on your Internet site. They are not easy to remember. When people use hyphens in domain names they presume that the potential customers will remember them, which is quite unlikely. For instance, when customers see a domain name like 'www.fun-for-pets.com' they are most probably going to type 'www.funforpets.com' because it is
more logical and definitely makes more sense. Thus, avoid superfluous things.

Now that you know what not to do, let's talk about some of the things you should do when looking for a domain name. First and foremost is to ALWAYS use the ".com" extension for domain names. This is the standard that everyone uses when typing in a URL to their Internet browser, and if you have another extension - .net, .org, .biz, etc. - you may be sending people to another site altogether. If the name you want is not available with ".com" then pick another domain.

Next, you want to make sure that your name is easy to spell. There are a lot of bad spellers out there, and if you choose a name that can be misspelled, it will be. For example, if you choose something like "www.specialoccassions.com", you may get any variation of either word, so people may be typing in "www.spechulokashens.com" (and don't laugh - I've seen worse misspellings on the Internet!).

And finally, try to make sure your domain is short. You will want to try and keep the domain to two, or at most three, words, and also try to keep it under 25 characters. This will keep the mistyped URLs to a minimum. For example, if your URL is "www.thebestwebsiteevernomatterwhat.com", chances are you'll get a lot of people missing letters and never finding your web site.

You could assume the guidelines stated above to be of a general nature. There are always going to be exceptions to the rule. Just keep in mind these when you give a domain name to your website and you would find that your business would thrive as people would find your website with ease.

Encargado Telosh is the owner and operator of FYE Internet, a leading Internet directory for internet information. For more internet information and resources, please stop by: http://www.fyeinternet.com/

source from http://www.besthostratings.com/articles/Choosing_the_Right.html