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One good example of a company that is doing United Kingdom hosting is UK2.net. With both shared and dedicated servers they have carved out a nice chunk of the UK hosting experience for themselves. They do dedicated UK web hosting that looks really exceptional and they are even using some US based servers too - so they are expanding themselves from one niche into another.
I was just catching up on my reading at Digg and found this little tool for monitoring website availability.
j2 Global licenses its patents to leading companies worldwide. Jeffrey D. Adelman, Vice President and General Counsel of j2 Global noted, ”We are especially delighted to add Hostopia as a licensee because they have a demonstrated ability to successfully sell IP-based business solutions on a large scale basis to telecommunications and Internet service providers. This agreement is a great opportunity to expand the market for digital faxing services by delivering these patented solutions into the hands of a leading service provider.”
Recommended dedicated server hosting Items
Do you know what Lunarpages customers have in common? Completly satisfaction. A
sense of fortune or luck for being part of this great host provider, call
whatever you want, I feel that way. I Highly recommend it, support rarely you
need it, but when is the time they are very, very professional, is the best, is
exactly why Lunarpages is the best host provider, their people! Go Lunar!
Server resources also come into play when it comes to blog hosting. Just in case your article gets dugg on digg.com or hyped up on any of the other big social news and link sharing sites, can your web site take the punch in traffic? This is something you should discuss one on one with your web host - but it most cases (unless the host isn’t that established) you should be OK in this department too. If using WordPress there are also addons that will make sudden growths in popularity more bearable, such as the WP-Cache addon.
It’s not often that you find free hosting worth the price you pay for it but maybe this has changed with the advent of a service from 000Webhost
We came across this entirely by accident in actual fact, and were surprised to see their offer of Cpanel hosting with MySQL support, PHP and 100 gigabytes of data transfer along with 250 Mb of storage. On the basis of those figures alone we thought it was worth checking out in more detail.
There is more including POP3 email and SMTP access, unlimited domain names (and yes you can host your own domain name) plus subdomains, add-on domains and parked domains and the service is entirely AD FREE - yes, no horrible gaudy third party ads to cloud your visitor’s experience when they land on your pages.
There is a Cpanel demo at the site (you don’t get bells and whistles like Fantastico for example) and there are no scripts but despite this, it has most things that a fledgling blogger or webmaster is going to need to get up and running.
In all honesty, the package is pretty impressive. For those who have always held back on setting up their own blog on their own domain for example, there really is no excuse not to give it a try if all you have baulked at in the past has been paying for hosting.
Now, I’ve not tried the service personally and I can’t comment on what support will be like from a free service like this, but let’s be honest here, what have you got to lose?
I think this kind of offer is going to tempt a lot of users of free blogging platforms to jump ship and go it alone. I also think it’s going to attract a lot of people setting up small websites for the first time.
We would love to hear from people who give this one a spin because on the face of it, it looks to be the bargain of the year so far!
Having recently launched the free ebook "An Absolute Beginners Guide To Web Hosting" I decided that it would be useful to include a glossary of hosting terms for those readers unfamiliar with some of the industry terminology. There follows a run down of some of the most commonly used phrases together with a brief translation of each.
A web host or web server is basically a computer connected to the Internet. The function of this computer is to serve up websites to internet users and is more powerful than a regular PC. These servers contain all the data stored by website owners that is required for their website(s) to be displayed online to the world at large.
There are various types of web hosting services available to serve varying needs.
a) Free Hosts - Generally speaking, free web hosting is a solution usually suited only to those who intend to set up a non commercial web site or perhaps to blog as a hobby. Usually, free hosting services offer only limited storage space and bandwidth. Free hosts often make their money by placing ads of various types on customer’s websites - these may include banners, pop-ups and text advertising, over which the user has no control. There are however some exceptions to this and in recent times more free hosting offers have been introduced with far better features.
Reliability, best performance and customer support can be lacking in the case of free hosting as well. Although customers of free hosts can usually use their own domain name if they have one, others will be given a subdomain name that includes the name of the host (for example yourname.freehostingcompany.com) which, for business or professional use does not carry the weight of your own domain.
b) Shared Hosting - Probably the most common option, hosting a huge number of sites across the internet. Shared hosting is popular due to cost and is most suited to personal users and small to medium business sites. Prices will vary widely and users can expect to pay from as little as a couple of dollars per month through to $40 per month depending on the features and level of the service.
With shared hosting, each server is shared among an indeterminate number of customers. Each website owner has a share of the storage space and the resources of the server. The higher the number of users allocated to a server, the lower the cost, but also the less resources available to each individual. The more expensive companies are less likely to overcrowd their servers resulting in improved performance and availability of their customer’s websites.
With a shared hosting plan, customers are usually able to host more than one domain name under a single account plus subdomains and parked domains but in all cases the allowances will differ. Whatever features are offered, all will be subject to the limits placed on the account in terms of space and resources per month.
c) Dedicated Hosts - As the name suggests, a server is dedicated to a single customer. Dedicated hosting is the choice of larger and higher traffic sites that need more resources than a shared host can provide. Customers rent and have total control over the server and can configure it to suit their purposes.
Their are varying service levels with dedicated hosting. A customer can opt to have a managed solution - in other words, the hosting company’s technical team will set up and maintain certain aspects on the customer’s behalf, or you can choose to manage the server yourself. As most webmasters are not hardware experts, a managed dedicated server is usually the best option. Costs for a dedicated server are naturally much higher than a shared service and can run into hundreds of dollars per month. Once again a lot depends on the level of service and support you expect or need.
The term co-located hosting refers to an arrangement whereby the customer purchases the server hardware outright and the hardware is then located at the hosting provider’s data center. Naturally the cost of co-located hosting is higher because the customer has to shoulder the cost of the hardware and it’s upkeep and repair.
d) VPS or Virtual Private Server Hosts - VPS (also called virtual dedicated servers) are an option for those who are looking for more than shared hosting but either cannot afford or justify their own dedicated server. In very basic terms, VPS are servers that do not interface directly with the hardware on which they run and they cannot interface directly with each other. The server is therefore ‘virtual’ and ‘private’ in the sense that it is independent of actual hardware and cannot interact with its file system or processes. VPS pricing varies greatly and is again dependent on the provider and the resources/services on offer, but normally prices should be expected to be higher than a shared host but lower than a dedicated service.
Other Hosting Services
Reseller hosting is a commonly offered service and basically means that a customer of a hosting company buys space on the hosting company’s servers and resell it to their own customers. Resellers will set their own prices and features of the hosting plans they decide to resell. The reseller consequently deals with his customers and their queries and complaints, although sometimes reseller plans are offered by companies who will take care of customer care themselves. A reseller is effectively a ‘middle man’ and his responsibilities will vary according to the company or companies with which he works.
Domain Name
A domain name is the permanent address of a website on the internet. The actual address of a website is a set of numbers and every web server has its own unique address. To remember these numbers would be virtually impossible and the domain name is an easily recognizable translation for human beings. Domain names are available with various suffixes such as .com or .net and each is unique. Buying and registering a domain name is a simple process and there are hundreds of places where customers can obtain the name of their choice. Prices vary from free into thousands of dollars but customers can usually register a domain for less than $20. There is an annual fee for owning a domain, and you can choose to register it for anything from a 12 months and up.
Space / Storage
The amount of storage space available on the server for your website - all it’s files, images and databases. Just like the storage space available on the hard drive of your own computer if you like. How much you will need depends on a whole range of things but nowadays most hosting companies offer more than adequate storage on shared servers for most users.
Bandwidth / Data Transfer
Bandwidth is the term used for the amount of data transferred from a web server to client’s s computer. Whenever a person views a web page, the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. Websites containing audio, video and image files or one offering lots of downloadable content consume more bandwidth than a simple text based site. The bandwidth available to customers will again vary tremendously from host to host and service level to service level.
Just because a shared host claims to offer huge bandwidth allowances does not necessarily make it so as other limits on the account such a CPU (central processor unit) resources will also come into play.
Users who exceed their bandwidth for a given month are sometimes charged for the excess or simply find their website(s) taken offline until the end of the month. Neither is something you really want to happen for obvious reasons.
Server Type
This relates to the operating system than runs the web server. Common OS types include Windows, Linux and UNIX. This has no bearing on the OS of your own PC. The server type will also affect the server side scripting (see below) 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 - Linux is an open source OS (in other words it’s free software) whereas Windows is a commercial application that you are doubtless familiar with if you are a PC user. Linux is probably more common because of this, but either will be satisfactory for most webmaster’s needs.
Server Side Scripting
PHP is the preferred server side scripting today because there are hundreds of open source or GPL PHP scripts available for webmasters to use. Many hosts include a collection of such scripts that can be quickly and easily be installed. However PHP does have its limitations and features required by some advanced websites as does the use of MySQL and some professional web developers still prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP while some prefer Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.
Databases
There are various different types of databases available. The most commonly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, blogs, content management, mailing lists, etc. Again however, it has its limitations and whilst normally sufficient for for smaller concerns it might not be powerful enough to cope with complicated large business sites. More powerful requirements are served better by databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.
Email
Most people are familiar with email of course but in relation to hosting it is worth a quick explanation. Most paid hosting accounts will include email accounts accounts with the customer’s domain. The number and size of email accounts totally depends on the individual hosting plan. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting but there are some exceptions. Small plans provide as little as 10 accounts whereas some will place no limit on the number available to you. Usually these email accounts are web based and also accessible through POP3 clients. Having your own dot com email address is a must for those doing business online - far more professional than using a personal or free email account which can often be detrimental to the perception of your business.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
File Transfer Protocol is the common way of transferring files across the Internet. Most webmasters use FTP to upload and download their website’s contents. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software and there are many free programs available. An FTP username and password will be provided to hosting customers to enable them to access their web server. Some hosts provide more than one FTP account to their customers according to their requirements.
Uptime / Downtime
There is little point in having a website if it is constantly unavailable for visitors. Downtime (periods of unavailability) need to be kept to a minimum as they can be very costly in terms of lost opportunities and business. Most hosts will claim uptime as a percentage such as 99.9% and anything less is not desirable for a small or medium business. Nobody can truly guarantee 100% because hardware can never be relied on 100% but a host who offers guarantees as well as compensation for downtime is important. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages and may use web monitoring services to notify hosts immediately a site goes down. Monitoring software is readily available for those who wish to keep a close eye on downtime.
Control Panel
The control panel is the web based interface used to administer all aspects of your websites and is fully explained in our free hosting ebook. It is where users manage things such as email accounts, statistics, FTP accounts, domains and sub-domains and databases. Some hosting companies use their own control panel and others will use third party applications such as cPanel, the most common Linux control panel in use today.
I hope this glossary, although not exhaustive, will be useful to newcomers and potential new hosting customers and clears up some of the terminology most commonly used.
It is basically preaching the same message that DreamHost blogged about almost 2 years ago. None of these web hosting review sites are reliable because top spots can usually be bought with monthly subscription fee. Either that or a hefty affiliation payout. Basically they should have renamed the top 10 hosting companies to the Top 10 Web Hosting Companies that Pay Me The Most. Funny that the site is hosted on GoDaddy, which quite often appears on those “top web hosting site” lists as well.
What About Paid Reviews?
I guess the same issue goes to many web hosting related articles/blog site as well, where sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether a review on a blog is genuine or not. Any money changed hands for this particular post? Are the links full of affiliation IDs? I was reading Daw Web Hosting Blog and Dimitar has pointed out an increasing number of paid-review blogs on web hosting, and those paid reviews can usually mislead consumers over purchasing decisions, as many people search for “<company name> review” thinking they got postive reviews from genuine customers.
I am not saying I am sinless in this department. I did a paid review a year ago on a UK hosting company when I tried out ReviewMe (although I can’t see any sale pitch in that article). As Dimitar said, I think doing those paid reviews might hurt the credibility of this site in the long run. I have since cancelled my ReviewMe account, and turned down many review requests — most are generic oversellers that offer nothing unique anyway.
Any Genuine Reviews Out There?
With paid listing and paid reviews littering the net, I am afraid to say that it can be almost impossible to find genuine reviews. Most website owners don’t write about them when things are smooth sailing so all the positive reviews ended up coming from the paid review sites.
One alternative is to search through Web Hosting Talk forums (where all the disgruntled customers whinged about their web hosting companies). Again, lots of negative reviews and sometimes I doubt how genuine some of the positive reviews are over there.
I guess there is no “The Best Host” where everyone raves about unconditionally. Do a bit of research making sure there are not too many negative reviews. Give them a try without committing too much up front. Make sure you do not purchase domain from the same place where you purchase hosting accounts. And this is important — do daily backups so you can move over to the next host if anything does go wrong…
hostgator offers linux hosting only(even though they are expected to start
windows hosting in the near future). All their packages come with all the
features needed for a serious website. Baby and Swamp packages allow unlimited
domains(add on), which makes a lot of sense if you have multiple websites. They
use cPanel, which is the best control panel around. You get Fantastico script
installer which will install most of the popular open source scripts with few
clicks.
They support PHP4 & 5, SSH, Cron jobs, Python, Ruby On Rails etc. Also, all the
packages include enough POP3 accounts(20 for Hatchling and unlimited for
others).
hostgator host their sites on top-of-the-line Dual Xeon servers in their data
centers at Dallas. The data centers are well equipped and connects to 10
backbone providers. They offer 99.9% uptime Guarantee which is the industry
standard.
We started realtime testing of hostgator uptime on Feb 2008. The test is done on
a site hosted with hostgator, using a third party uptime monitor service. The
result after one week shows 99.78% uptime for our test site hosted with
hostgator.
While this is slightly less than the assure 99.9%, it is the BEST performance
out of top 4 hosts tested. There has never been a single case of site being down
for more than 3 minutes at a stretch. hostgator indeed lived up to their
reputation.
For almost all new website owners, finding the perfect host is a time consuming
and stressful process. hostgator.com works hard to simplify the process, and
makes choosing the perfect hosting package as easy as possible. They feature
packages that will suit websites of almost all types, no matter what the
bandwidth requirements, storage needs, or language support.
When you visit the hostgator website, you will first find several aspects of the
site itself that make moving forward intuitive. Their phone numbers are
immediately available should you have any questions, and several different
packages are only a click or two away. From their $4.95 per month shared hosting
package, to their dedicated server offerings starting from $174 per month, there
is a solution for all different budgets, levels of experience, and feature
requirements.
For the experienced domain and hosting guru, hostgator.com website domain name
hosting offers free domain transfer, free file transfers, free database
transfers, and free script transfers, among other things. These services make
moving your existing websites to hostgator a breeze, allowing you to focus on
the more important aspects of website ownership, such as content creation and
customer service.
Speaking of customer support, hostgator offers amazing support to all customers,
no matter which hosting package they may subscribe to. From 24 hour telephone
support, to flash tutorials, to an extremely comprehensive knowledge base,
hostgator.com makes getting your questions answered an exceedingly efficient and
rewarding process. No longer will you have to wait days to receive an e-mail
response from your current host. Answers to basic, account related questions, as
well as the most advanced technical questions, are just a phone call away at all
times. The phone support staff has proven to be quite helpful, and wait times
while seeking technical support of any kind is generally minimal.
Regarding their hosting packages, one of the more interesting and cost effective
packages seems to be the most popular option available on hostgator.Com. For
$7.95 per month, website owners can enjoy hosting unlimited websites, free
set-up, 600 gigabytes of storage, and 6,000 gigabytes of bandwidth. Given the
rates of other hosting providers for similar services, it is very easy to see
how inexpensive hostgator actually is.
Hosting your website doesn�t have to be a nightmare. By finding a quality host
that will assist you in the process of getting set up, such as hostgator.com,
you will be able to focus on promotional efforts, as opposed to constant
technical issues with your website itself.
Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:54:57 GMT
How a software company decided not to make software.
Rodney Giles, Co-founder and CEO of Eleven2 remarked, ”We really wanted to do something out of the box here at Eleven2. A lifetime hosting plan is pretty out of the box and just the right match for President Bush’s plan. For $600, anyone is able to take advantage of our lifetime hosting plan.”
ecommerce web hosting Products we recommend
A ix web hosting review is usually positive. This is because ixwebhosting.com
uses cPanel as the ixweb hosting control panel. This makes it easy to use for
people who are just starting out as webmasters. There are a lot of new customers
who sign up with one of the other top ten hosting companies and get frustrated
right away. This is because these companies have gotten too large to take on the
new and smaller accounts and don�t really have the 24/7 support staff that can
teach beginners how to manage their site. What a lot of people don�t realize is
that customer support from the top ten companies doesn�t mean webmaster teaching
or hand-holding. ixwebhosting.com seems to take this into stride and doesn�t
seem to mind the extra time it takes to coach someone along.
ixwebhosting.com has been around since 1999. They have over 180 employees and
host about 200,000 domains. They have three basic plans, Expert Plan, Business
Plus, and Unlimited Pro. The plans start at $6 a month and go up to $15. They
seem to get compared to Bluhost.com a lot, probably because their services are
the most comparable, although BlueHost seems to get higher rankings for a
customer-support staff that users claim are more knowledgeable. ixwebhosting.com
is fully compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac OS, which is handy.
Other than that, it isn�t very remarkably different from the other hosting
companies who keep dropping prices and providing more hosting services. A few
extra features are included in the starting price, but in this extremely
competitive industry it�s hard to know how long that will last. In fact,
comparative reviews pitting one hosting company against another are increasing
as the consumer becomes more educated about how hosting companies quickly change
prices and services as everyone scrambles to make a quick buck off the internet.
ixwebhosting.com looks like one of the good companies, but again, provides the
same service everyone else has.
The Expert plan ($5.95 a month) includes unlimited domains, 600 gigs of disk
space, one free domain registration, 6,000 gigs of data transfer, and unlimited
subdomains. The Business plan ($8.95 a month) includes unlimited domains, 1,000
gigs of disk space, two free domain registrations, 8,000 gigs of data transfer,
and unlimited subdomains. Unlimited pro ($14.95 a month) includes unlimited
domains, unlimited disk space, three free domain registrations, 10,000 gigs of
data transfer, and unlimited subdomains. Some features like the site builder are
free and other optional features like credit card processing are reasonably
priced, but if you are serious about e-commerce, you are going to pay more here
and there.
Of course, the cpanel makes webhosting easy to use right from the start. It
doesn�t have as many icons as other hosting companies, but the Getting Started
Wizard is next to the Video Tutorials icon which makes getting started faster
for newcomers to web site management. The Logs section is at the top of the
panel which is convenient and includes icons for latest visitors, bandwidth,
Webelizer, Webelizer FTP, raw access logs, analog stats, and error log. The rest
of the panel is made up of standards like E-mail accounts, MX entry, FTP
accounts, Cron jobs, SSH/Shell manager, GnuPG keys, MySQL databases, etc.
Probably the biggest selling point for ixwebhosting.com is that while they are
shared hosting, they still own the company themselves and don�t look like they
are looking at selling anytime soon. This makes them a more reliable and stable
company for people who don�t have the luxury of becoming the causalities of
corporate mergers that are causing unnecessary downtime for sites these days.
Hopefully, ixwebhosting.com will stay the course of being independent and
continue to get good reviews.
) plus subdomains, add-on domains and parked domains and the service is entirely AD FREE - yes, no horrible gaudy third party ads to cloud your visitor’s experience when they land on your pages.
