Tag Archives: web hosting

Shared Hosting, VPS, Dedicated Hosting – What Are They?

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In this world of computers and internet, it is no surprise that so many companies are now trying to get their websites on the internet as quickly and cheaply as possible. Every website on the internet requires that it be on a server. Some companies need absolute freedom in how they operate the server, desiring to control every aspect. However, some companies merely want their website online, and they don’t care much about the specifics. Luckily for them both, there are a few different types of web hosting available, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

The three types of web hosting that are most common are called shared hosting, VPS, and dedicated hosting. Shared hosting is when the server basically has many different websites operating off of it at the same time. There are a lot of negative effects to shared hosting. These can include running a lot slower than other types, having much more traffic that collides, and a huge lack of control and personalization of the server. However, shared hosting is really cheap, the cheapest of all of the hosting types, and if you don’t need a large amount of control of personalization, then shared hosting could be just about the perfect solution for you.

VPS, or virtual private servers, are another way of hosting your site. They are almost as cheap as shared hosting, but come with much more control and personalization capabilities, such as a dedicated server. This is done by logically segmenting the server, meaning that you create many servers out of the one; you devote some of the resources of one server to create many ‘virtual’ servers. This is a great way to have the personalization that you may need, while still keeping the costs low. The only real downside is that it can still be fairly small, and at times the backbone circuit could become overloaded with traffic.

Finally, dedicated hosting is the most expensive of the three. However, as the old adage goes, you get what you pay for. With dedicated servers, you rent the entire server for your website. You don’t have to share even a little bit of it, meaning that you have free reign to do what you need to do with your website, and what you want to do, not limited by pre-set formats or operating systems. This can be a great solution for the large business that needs a lot of space and a lot of control, and dedicated servers give you everything that you need for your site to be exactly as you want it to be.

In conclusion, the three main types of servers are great for different situations and need. Each has the potential to be the ideal solution for a specific problem. Shared hosting is great for small needs, without a need for personalization. Virtual servers can be perfect for those who don’t need much space, but still need to personalize it, while dedicated servers give all the space and personalization that you need, but you pay for it.

The Advantages of Using a Managed Hosting Service

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Hiring employees for a business is really expensive. After the industrial revolution, people began to get more and more rights (as they should get) and the almost slave labour of this tumultuous time ended with legislation outlining the rights of the working individual. As such, every business tries to limit the amount of employees that it hires, and instead tries to get as much production out of a few that they can possibly get.

It’s not wonder either, because running a business is expensive! So why hire more employees than you have to? Why would you hire someone to take care of a server for your website when you can simply ask for a company that specializes in this sort of thing to do it for you, at a fraction of the cost? Indeed, managed hosting are getting more and more affordable, and shared servers are becoming more and more available. So what does this mean for you and your business? It means that you now have new options to save money while maximizing your marketing potential through the internet.

Using managed services for your business allows you a great deal of flexibility in choosing exactly what you need with your website. You could opt for dedicated server hosting. This particular choice gives you great flexibility and the ability to personalize the server the way that you want and need it. Then there are the so called shared servers, that give you a place on the internet for a very cheap price. However, they don’t give you much more, being highly restricted, and often problematic in that up to 250 other websites can be stored and run off of the same server. This means a lot of traffic for you and your poor little web site.

Outsourcing server hosting also is beneficial in another way: you give them money every month and then forget that they even exist. This is great because now you don’t have to worry about trying to run your website personally, trying to fix every little bug that may occur, trying to make everything work in a way that you want it done. This is what you’re paying these fine server-company folks to do for you! And they know that if they don’t make you satisfied, there are a thousand and one other server companies that would just love to have your business. This means less worries for you, less hassles, and perhaps best of all, less costs.

Finally, it saves you the trouble of having to go out and find the right servers, of having to buy your own, of having to buy the OS, of having to buy the specific hardware configurations, of having to do all of that not so fun stuff.

Ultimately, having a managed hosting service for you and your business is a great idea. It can save you money in numerous ways, from preventing unneeded employees to not spending extra money on insurance and other intricacies involved with running a server.

Choosing Between Windows and Linux Hosting

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There are  a lot of options when it comes to choosing how you are going to get your website up on the internet. I mean, everybody wants to get their websites up on the internet these days, and because of the varying needs and desires of all of these new clients, many new types of servers and ways to run servers have been created to suit these needs. So what happens when no only are there about a hundred different types of server options, but then you can also get them in both the Microsoft and Linux flavours? Which lollipop, so to speak, are you going to find the most tasty? Well, the answer is really simple: it depends on what you need it to do.

Before you know the difference between Linux and Microsoft servers, you should probably know a little bit about servers in general. Servers are used to put your web site on the internet. They are basically powerful computers that offer ‘services’ to the hundreds and thousands of possible clients out there just waiting to take advantage of those services. They can range from being a simple shared host to a dedicated server host, to any other number of different kinds.

So what is the difference between linux hosting  and windows hosting? Well, let’s start with Windows first. Windows hosting is known for its ability to handle multimedia-heavy applications and websites. They are typically known for giving a lot of ‘connection’ between the user and the host, meaning that they are good for allowing the two parties to interact. They are better options for items that use a lot of Microsoft technologies as well. Microsoft hosting is like going to disneyland. There is always a lot going on, from the rides and all of the yummy treats to the giant mascots and the amazing hotels. One thing that you need to be careful with is that sometimes they can take up a lot of resources and that mean you may have to fork out more money to maintain a hosting plan on Windows.

Linux hosting is like a Toyota. They generally aren’t the pretties car on the road. They are plain, and don’t support fancy and futuristic technologies (at least, they didn’t used to ;) Toyota has come a long way. Imagine their low end models!). However, one can make a very good argument that Toyota is possibly one of the most stable cars on the road, one that you can always rely on. This is like Linux! They are very stable, and very powerful, and are very secure. If you have a website that isn’t overly fancy and that you  need to be very secure, Linux is the way to go. Of course, for the maximum personalization you will need a dedicated server host.

In conclusion, although both the windows and the linux hosting servers can be good choices, and can basically do almost anything the other is made for, they do have their strengths and weaknesses, and any wise businessman will take advantage of these.

Domain Name Servers: How Do They Affect Your Website?

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I want you to imagine something. I want you to consider how many websites exist in the world today. There have to be thousands, right? Noooo, way more than that! Millions! Millions of different websites that can be accessed today. Now, think about how you access them. You don’t type a whole bunch of random numbers into your computer and hope that the right website comes up. That is ludicrous! And I know that we certainly are not capable of storing millions of different IP addresses in our minds, being able to access the ones that we need at will. That, again, is ludicrous. So how, then, are we able to access the various results of web hosting world wide? The answer is simple: DNS.

Web hosting, and in particular dns hosting, is very essential for the existence of the internet. Without DNS hosting, the internet could exist, but it would be almost unnavigable. Essentially DNS stands for Domain Name Servers, and they are what allow you to access the web sites that you need. DNS servers were in a hierarchical manner, with 13 main servers existing worldwide that contain every single website in the world. Servers below these don’t contain as many names, and the lower down the hierarchy, the less names the server will know.

So how do they work? Well, imagine that your website is located on some specific dedicated servers. It has an IP address, an allocation of seemingly random numbers that humans don’t really tend to understand well. So how do people find your website? Well, located on a DNS server somewhere will be the name of your website, and right beside it, the IP address that corresponds to it. Suddenly your dedicated servers went from being nameless numbers to something that we can understand! This is what DNS is!

Essentially, without DNS, people would never find your website. It’s like if you’re learning a new language. You don’t know what certain words mean, but you need to find out, because they are very important for you. So what do you do? Well, any sane man would consult a dictionary, first of all (or in this day jump on Google translate). This is the exact same thing as your web browser querying a DNS server, asking it what this name means, in the language that it speaks, which being a computer is numbers! So essentially DNS servers are huge dictionaries that allow your computers and the millions of other computers in the world to find your website, and without these DNS servers, your website would be almost useless. You can see how important they are!

All in all, DNS servers do more than just take extra bandwidth and space. They allow the internet to be what it is today. They allow it to be fast and efficient and organized, and if DNS servers didn’t exist, the internet would be almost unusable! As such, be sure to make sure that your website is registered in the DNS server of your internet provider, or you’ll never get any visitors.

Things to Consider When Setting Up Your Website

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Advertising is quite possibly the single most important aspect of running your business. You can’t run a business without customers, and without advertising, nobody will ever know that you exist. This is why it is so important to get your name out as quickly, cheaply, and effectively as is humanly possible. After all, there are millions and millions of people online, each with the possibility of seeing your very own business web page.
However, hosting a website can come with a lot of complications, and being your own website designer may not be the best idea. You see, there used to be a time when it was perfectly acceptable and ok for a person to make his or her own web page. In fact, this is still a perfectly reasonable alternative, if you are willing to invest the considerable amount of time it takes to learn how to make a website. However, hiring a professional website designer may be infinitely better than doing it on your own, and there are really good reasons for this.

Have you ever been searching the net and suddenly stumbled upon a webpage with a single colour background, and perhaps some random pictures with text going down the middle? This is probably what your website will look like if you do it yourself. As such, although hiring professionals to make your webpage will cost you money in the beginning, it will ultimately bring your more money in the end. This is because they are, after all, professionals. Just make sure that you choose a reputable company who isn’t there to just take your money.
Of course, these days, most web host will provide a free website builder or web designing tool for their customers. Through an intuitive interface, you can have your own professional-looking website without any programming knowledge. All the graphics, design and layouts are done for you. All you have to to is to upload your content. How easy is that?
Looking for a web hosting company these days isn’t hard.. What can be difficult is finding a good one. When you are looking for a server company, ask them a few questions. Are they going to do all of the maintenance? How old are their servers? How many websites do they generally run off of each server? Any more than 250 and you should walk away, even if you plan to get a dedicated one. If they rip their other customers off like this, what will they do to you? As well, you should ask them what kind of insurance they have on their equipment, and how often it is given maintenance.
A good server company will help you make sure that your website is suited for the specific type of server that you want (which is also why you need to hire professional webpage designers) so that your site runs smoothly and efficiently. Once you have chosen the company that you want, and matched the website, and found that it’s ok, it’s time to get it all up and running! Load the webpage and information onto the server, and start advertising to the world that you are here, and here to stay!

What is Dedicated Hosting?

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There are a lot of different options for a business to get its website up and running and online. This is both a blessing and a problem, as there may be too many choices, which can leave a potential client unsure about what to choose and why. However, just knowing what you need may be all the information that you need to make a decision, and for those who need a lot of flexibility and control over their website, dedicated hosting may be exactly what they are looking for.

Dedicated hosting is when a business offers a dedicated server, which means that instead of sharing a server with a bunch of other websites, you will be paying for the entire thing, all to yourself. This means that you get a tone of flexibility, and a tone of control. However, this freedom certainly comes at a price, as servers are not cheap! When it comes to renting servers, the dedicated server is without a doubt the most expensive type that you can choose. So does that mean that it is worth it, and do cheap dedicated servers exist? Well, depending what you need, a dedicated server may be exactly what you’re looking for, and if you look around, there are always different companies offering discounts to win you over.

In order to understand just what a dedicated server is, it may be helpful to understand how they compare to some other servers. Imagine you are looking for a place to live. A dedicated server could be likened to a big 4 or 5 bedroom house in a really nice neighborhood. It’s really nice to have, but it’s expensive, and you might not need all that space. But with a big house like this, you won’t have to deal with other foot traffic, and you can change whatever you want! Personalize it to work the way you need it to. Now compare it to shared hosting. Imagine that you just rented a room in this house now, and that all of the other rooms, and perhaps even the living room, are also rented out to other people. It is a lot more cluttered. You won’t be able to personalize it the way you need, and you will need to share everything, such as the bathrooms and kitchen. This can be a real hassle.

Finally, imagine that each room had its own kitchen and bathroom, kind of like an apartment. It is still cheaper than renting the whole house, but you still have all of the freedom that renting the whole house brings! This is VPS hosting. It is known for offering the freedoms of a dedicated server with a much reduced cost.

This is why so many people are interested in dedicated servers, and especially cheap dedicated servers. They offer so much freedom. However, if you don’t need so much freedom then they are not really worth so much money being paid into them! Renting an entire server can be very expensive, and when you don’t need that kind of space or freedom, it’s not worth it.

Tips on Choosing the Right Web Hosting Company

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So you finally chose to get your business a website! That’s great. You already hired the programmers and HTML guys, and they already finished everything up for you. Now you need to find what kind of web hosting you want to use, and perhaps more importantly, which company you will go with. This can be a serious challenge for those companies out there just starting out, as there are many, many different hosting companies who are all waiting to eagerly snatch up your money. As such, you need to make sure that they are worth the cost that you’re going to pay!

One of the first things that you need to look for when looking for a web hosting company is how many websites they host on one server at a time. This kind of hosting is called shared hosting, and it is the cheapest way to go. However, if the server company is hosting too many websites on each server, then you will be paying them for a sub-par product, unable to do the things which you need it to do. Having too many websites on a server will mean that it won’t be able to handle the traffic well, and will be very slow. Generally anything more than 250 sites per server, you should steer clear.

Something else that you should look for is what kind of security they are packing. The last thing that you want is your sensitive business information being hacked or found by another business sharing the same server as you! The server company should have a firewall in place, whether virtual or physical. A firewall is a series of safeguards that are designed to limit access to your information and files, which means that it is more protected from the other businesses sharing your server or even company.

Another thing really keep an eye on when choosing a company is how much redundancy they use, or in other words, if they have a server backup, and how much they have. Every company should have a server backup. This is for your own good! If a company does not have one, then they are only interested in themselves and don’t care what happens to your information. A backup server is something that is there in case the server that you are using goes down or something happens to it. Maybe a power surge fries it, or perhaps they simply lose power somehow. However, having a backup will always be able to save your information and keep your website online when it otherwise would not.

Essentially, when you are looking for a company to host your website and the information that is sensitive and important to you, you just need to look for things that indicate that they actually care about what happens to your website and your information. You need to look for indications of good customer service, and that they aren’t over-burdening their servers. If you use common sense and ask a lot of questions, you should get a good feeling for how the company is.

When Should Your Business Get a Managed Server?

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There inevitably comes a time in every business’ life that it needs to begin paying for someone to manage managed services for its website. This may be construed as a bad thing, but it’s actually something very good! This shows that the business is in fact growing so much that they can’t keep control of their website, and that their current server settings cannot handle the traffic of everyone visiting its website.

So, when should one consider getting managed services? Or better yet, what kind of web hosting should the business choose? These are both questions that need to be asked, especially if the first question is already answered by the business! However, in general, a business should begin to pay for a second party to manage their servers if the business website can no longer handle the volume of traffic and if the business no longer is able to or wants to devote enough time to manage and control it itself. The second question, the one concerning the type of web hosting a business should get, is the more difficult to answer. So, what are the best types of hosting available?

The main types are as follows: shared hosting, dedicated hosting, VPS, and cloud. The first, shared hosting is the cheapest. This may be the type you want if you do not require a lot of control over the settings on the server, such as the format of it. It is one of the most popular kinds because it is so cheap, but it certainly does have its limitations. It’s like renting a room from somebody. You can live there and sleep there, but you have to share the kitchen, and share the washroom, and every other part of the house, and you’re always going to be running into other foot traffic inside.

The second kind of hosting are called dedicated servers. These are the most expensive type of hosting, and this is because you are renting an entire server for yourself, your one website. This is not recommended for smaller businesses but only for large ones with very specific needs for their website. You can liken it to renting a very large house in a great area of the suburbs, perhaps. You have no one to share it with you, and you can do whatever you want to the house to personalize it.

The third is VPS, which means that it is virtual. It’s like renting an apartment. You all share the building, but you get all of the advantages of the dedicated server. This can be a great choice. Finally is the cloud, which is perhaps the most simple: you pay for as much as you use every month. Ultimately, knowing when to get a second party to manage your servers can be tricky, but if you want a website created or don’t want to manage one yourself anymore, hiring another business to do this for you can be a great idea, especially with the assortment of different choices.

Which Web Hosting Service Should You Choose?

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There is a vast array of web hosting services available on the internet and frankly, it can be so daunting! Just simply browsing through the websites of web hosting providers can give you an intense headache.

What with shared hosting, vps, dedicated servers, cloud hosting…you’ll be forgiven if you’re truly lost. And especially if you are an entrepreneur just starting out on your business, you would do well to consider carefully the options available on the market so that you can find a plan that is the ‘best’ fit for your business. Well, there is no such thing as a ‘best fit’ per se, as you will probably go through the various cycles of growth in your business. With each cycle, your web hosting needs will naturally change.

For me, when I first started business selling some fitness equipment online, all I wanted was a simple static website, which basically serves as an online brochure. There were pages and pages of information with pictures of my products. And if somebody wanted to make an order, he has to fill in a simple order form, which would then send the details of his order to my email account. And when I opened my email box, voila! there’s my order.

As my business grew, technology also improved. Soon, it was the order form wasn’t enough for my needs. In fact, my shared hosting account does not even support scripts that were so vital for having a shopping cart. And it was then necessary for me to move to another web hosting provider that had features to support my scripts. And then, it was necessary for me to start charging my customers’ credit cards instantly so that I can rush the orders to them. And so, it became apparent that I had to get a dedicated server, so that I could implement greater security to allow my shopping cart to ‘talk’ to my credit card processor’s servers. All this were happening in real time so that within a minute, the my customers’ credit cards were charged and I can process their orders.

In many ways today, things haven’t changed that much. People are still processing orders online and collecting credit card information. However, these days, payment processors like Paypal makes things a lot easier for the smaller merchants. In fact, online shopping has changed so much that it may not be necessary to have a shopping cart installed on your account. Thousands of people are shopping at so-called blog shops, which are basically nothing more than a simple blog with pictures and information online. And if a customer likes what he sees, he can simply make a payment using Paypal, send the unique transaction ID to the seller and that’s basically it. But that would also mean that the web hosting requirements have changed too. So, it would mean that instead of requiring a hosting account with all the bells and whistles, all a blog shop owner requires is simple a blog!

And so, if you’re confused over the various offerings available on the market and how you can choose a web hosting plan, then you’ll want to read on. I am putting together a series of articles here that would hopefully help both the small business owner and enterprise decision maker who prefers to read it in simple English without the technical jargon (hopefully).

Please be patient as this blog will take time to grow (I do have a full-time job, you know.) So, please check back often for the latest update! Thank you!