The Benefits of Multiple Domain Web Hosting

Thanks to the low charge of domain names and hosting fees it is conceivable to own many websites without breaking the bank. There are a few ways to handle multiple domains so it is vital to understand what your options are and the benefits and disadvantages of each approach. The most elementary selection when managing multiple domains is whether to do so with the identical hosting company. Most hosts offer packages which can allow several sites to be attached to one account, or allow single sites to run under separate accounts. You may own an existing website and be delighted with the services your host provides. If you resolve to start a new website using the identical host, dealing with a company you are familiar with and trust will comfort you.

You may also get a discount for each added account you open with the same host. On the other hand, using a new host for a second (or third or fourth) website can allow you to compare the quality of hosting offered by different companies. In addition, separate hosts will provide each of your web sites with a different IP address.

Having different IP addresses can be critical if you intend to link the sites together to aid in search engine optimization. Incoming links are an important pointer of how consequential a website is, so a site with many incoming links can get a higher position in search engines like Google . If all the links are coming from the same IP address, however, Google may reduce their value. Hosting your numerous sites with different hosting companies guarantees that each site has a different IP address. Individual IP addresses, however, are available at an extra cost from most web hosts. For a yearly fee each website can have its own unique IP address. This can help with search engine ranking and if you want to have a secure connection (https) on your site.

If you decide to host all your sites with the same company, there are three basic ways to go. Each site could have its own account; you could sign up for a reseller account; or you could get a dedicated server account. As a reseller you are acting as an agent for the hosting company. They apportion some disk space and bandwidth to you which you use as you please. There may be a limitation to the number of websites you can host with your reseller account. If you have space left after using this account for your own sites you could earn some extra income by selling accounts to other people. The advantage of a reseller account is the hosting company taking care of all the technical details. Some will even provide gateways for billing your customers.

A dedicated server account gives you command of all the resources of an entire server. You are free to setup as many websites as you wish and assign disk space and bandwidth as you see fit. The disadvantage to this account is that you are responsible for maintaining the server. This requires significant technical know-how so if you don't have that knowledge or don't feel like learning about it, dedicated servers are not for you. You can, of course, go with a managed dedicated server. The disadvantage of this is the higher cost involved.

Hosting all your sites with one host can offer many advantages but there is one chief drawback : if your server goes down, all your sites go down. If you are depending on your sites for income this can be catastrophic. So, it is a good idea to have at least one of your sites with a different host. If your sites are essential for your livelihood and you can't manage any down time whatever, it is better to host everything with (at least) two hosts

What's soooooo important inside that network?

Unauthorized access is age old. It began with the Romans and their poor, landless citizens attempting to infiltrate colossal Roman castles. The concept within Internet hacking is relatively similar, all based around a single theme: information. Those with information, therefore, have access and power, even if it is confined to one particular network, for a short amount of time. The importance, then, of hacking, can be said to include information and power. Gravy... This begs the question of how these hackers gain access to networks. Some common tricks include password deciphering, buffer overflows, scripts and DoS attacks. The purpose of this article is to introduce you to what exactly hackers do to gain access, and to quench the steadfast intrigue of these concepts.

What are hackers? What are crackers?

Definitions for these two terms vary, but suffice it to say that hackers are those exceptionally knowledgeable computer users, often skilled in programming languages and Internet logic. The term hacker, then, can conceivably be used with either a positive or negative connotation. Throughout the years, this term has gained much momentum to the negative. Now, the term often means to gain access to a network, after hacking their way in. The term crack means to break into a computer system. Hackers wish to differentiate the two terms, as hackers are said to strive towards information for the purposes of pranks, or web site 'modification'. Crackers, on the other hand, have a specific purpose to break into secure systems, capture the password(s) and wreak havoc on the machine. Since these two terms are often used reciprocally, this article will exercise the terms hacker and hack, opposed to cracker and crack.

Efforts to gain passwords

SIMPLE INVESTIGATION

Let's get into the meat and potatoes of what hacking is all about: capturing the often illusive password. By their nature, passwords should be illusive, but hackers contrive methods and techniques to gather them, and use them for their own purposes within a network. The password is the lowest, but ultimately the most important, step in the hacking totem pole. Once a password is compromised (or seized), hackers use it to realize additional rights and privileges within the system.

So, how are passwords seized? Regardless of how secure the network itself is, there are always insecurities, and that includes the actual users of the network (or, Mr. Do Mas). Sure, hackers can use sophisticated password utilities to guess passwords on a system, but oftentimes a little investigation provides what the hacker is looking for. Believe it or not, a major source of password compromise is the simple laziness of users. Users write the passwords down on little Post-It notes and place them within their desk. Users give their passwords to others. Passwords are printed out on pieces of paper that are often thrown out whole. A little rummaging through an office and its waste can surface more information than you might imagine.

Hackers also use a technique known as social engineering. They may call up a network administrator, pose as a confused network user and claim that they lost his or her password. This works way too often and many times is the first thing that hackers try.

TROJAN HORSES

The war between the Achaeans and the Trojans continued for 10 long years. After the death of Achilles (known as the greatest warrior among the Greeks), the Achaeans constructed a wooden horse and filled it with warriors and brought it into the city of Troy. Once inside, the warriors exploded from the wooden horse and destroyed the city; or so the legend goes. A trojan horse in computer terms means essentially the same thing, a seemingly harmless computer program infiltrates the computer system, while malicious routines are being executed behind the scenes. One of the first trojan horses was a program that impersonated a login box. Once the user enters his or her password, they are saved in a location that the hacker has access to.

This type of trojan horse is commonly installed on library computers, or an otherwise public computing environment. Trojan horses are often more disguised than a simple login prompt. Windows and Linux system commands, for example, are susceptible to manipulation. Without getting into technicalities, the windows command edit can be compromised and instructed to launch a malignant batch file behind the scenes, deleting or even adding user accounts with administrator privileges. Remember that a trojan horse is an executable file, which can be recognized with the .exe, .vbs, .com, etc extensions. A trojan horse sent through e-mail can often be found by noticing an extension like .txt.vbs.

PACKET SNIFFERS

Network data travels through network media in variable sized packets. These packets, of course, are never seen in their raw form, as a series of network protocol rules convert such packets to data that applications can interpret and display. However, before data packet arrives at the recipient's computer, the packet can be snatched out of the media by packet sniffing software. Because such utilities, like Telnet or SNMP, were designed to send passwords over network media in plaintext, or unencrypted form, passwords can be easily compromised using this method.

Note that packet sniffers are capturing utilities, and cannot be used to actually modify any of the seized data packets. Sniffers can capture data within multiple protocols, like IP (Internet Protocol), UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), allowing a single application to function well within a wide array of computing environments. Passwords are not the only way hackers gain access to networks. Next, we will take a look at buffer overflows, and what it provides to hackers

3 Important factors you must consider before choosing your web hosting provider!

If you are planning to transfere your business online, or even will start your business on the internet from scratch, the first thing you will face is: where you will host your websites? and if you are new to this area (web hosting), you will find yourself a bit confused about many webhosting terminology, so it'll be very important to you to understand these terms before you take your decision. Here, I will mention to the most important factors you must take in consideration:

1. Bandwidth: (data transfer) is measured in gigabytes. A gigabyte is one billion bytes. Each letter is one byte. Images can take up a big amount of kilobytes (thousands of bytes), and file downloads can be several megabytes (millions of bytes) in size. You must logically think of how much bandwidth your website will need. Unless your website has a lot of downloads, it will be unlikely that you will need many gigabytes of transfer - 10 gigabytes should be very enough. Any more, and you will just be paying extra for something to use. On that note though, you should be careful and make sure you always have some extra bandwidth - many hosting providers charge $3.00 and more for every extra gigabyte of bandwidth you use. That can add up very quickly.

2. # Of hosted domains allowed: One of the most important factors which must be taken into account when choosing your hosting provider is the number of websites that allow you to host on a single account, some hosting companies allow only for one domain per account, some other companies will allow you to host an unlimited websites per one account, meanning several aebsites at the expense of one. If you are serious about your business on the Internet then you must be aware of the fact that you will sooner or later will need to launch more websites to expand your business to high levels. Therefore it is important to take this point into consideration where you will remove the burden of purchasing additional webhosting accounts to host the new websites in the future.

3. Control Panel: Before you buy a web hosting plan, ask the hosting company show you a demo for the control panel from which you will administrate your hosting account. Control panel is the place where you can check your website visitor statistics, add or erase email accounts, host additional domains on your account, install scripts and make other nominal changes for your website. Control panel should be easy to use with friendly interface and you should take some time to understand what it is all about before purchasing your hosting plan

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:

1. Make sure you've already secured the services of the new host.
2. Ensure that you have access to your existing scripts and data.
3. 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!

Searching around for a web hosting company? Here's what to keep in mind

The current count of web hosts yields just over a gazillion companies claiming to be number 1, offering the very best in what hosting can offer with prices that simply cannot be beat. Needless to say, it can take a trained eye this day and age to see through their gimmicks and get right down to whether this company has what you want. If you're confused about what to choose, read on.Before even beginning your search, analyze what your needs are. What features would you like your site to have? What Internet programming languages do you anticipate using? Be sure to take under consideration any feedback form features, database connectivity or any other site virtue that is simply too advanced for pure HTML.

Would you like e-mail addresses? Do you have a domain name? How much traffic do you expect to receive? All these questions and more help in the final decision for that one glorious hosting company. In the midst of your search, you'll probably run across hosting services that offer 'unlimited bandwidth'. This is simply not true. The term 'bandwidth' refers to the amount of information that is past between the hosting servers and the end user. Most hosting companies are connected to high-speed Internet backbones (UUNET, Sprint, AT&T, etc) which charge the hosting company based on their monthly bandwidth from customers. Needless to say, if you rack up upwards of 25Gigs of bandwidth a month, that lacks financial prosperity for your hosting company.

Be sure to read the terms of service very carefully with each hosting company that you are considering, especially if they advertise 'free' or 'unlimited' site features. A hosting company's support services often goes untested, especially with beginners in the site design and hosting world. A skilled and prompt support staff should be one of the most important decision breakers in your mind. If you run into trouble getting a perl script to work, or perhaps your database permissions are not setup correctly on the hosting company's side.

You want those problems corrected, and fast. One way to test a service's support staff is to simply send them an e-mail and see how long it takes for a response to be sent. Try to send an inquiry to support and sales and any other department you deem necessary. Ask support if they offer a web language that you like, or ask the sales department if they charge your credit card or hire another company to do it for them. If you receive a response the same day, you can probably rest assured you will receive timely help with any inquiries you have. They should not take more than one complete day to get back to you. Perform research away from the company's web site. Ask questions through e-mail lists and other mediums to try and get some feedback. If the company lists a testimonials section, look into contacting the authors of the testimonials and start asking questions.

The more comments you have, the better understanding you'll have on how that hosting service treats its customers. Pay attention to how long they have been online. A well-established hosting company of many years will most likely yield the greatest chances of customer successes. Click on the about page if they have one and read it all; after all, you may very well be giving this company your credit card number. Now, let's get down to the nitty gritty: Does the service offer what you want? Although you may expect your site to remain fairly small, allow yourself some room to grow, represented in megabytes (Mbs). If you're using 5Mbs, look for 10. If you're using 20Mbs, look for 30 or 40. If you are a photographer and want to use your site as a portfolio, you better opt for a more powerful account with more space and bandwidth, as images take more of both. Depending on how many images you have and how popular your site is, look for at least 50Mbs of space and 5Gigs of bandwidth. However, a regular, average size site with mostly html pages should be fine with 15 or 20Mbs and 1 or 2gigs of bandwidth and paying no more than $15 a month, depending on other features.

If you have purchased your own domain name, be sure the hosting company supports them (most do), and be sure they give you at least 1 e-mail address (you@yourdomain.com). A lot of companies offer 10 or more custom pop e-mail accounts with unlimited forwarding address at little or no additional cost, which is a nice feature. .

Web Hosting Industry Event, HostingCon 2008, to Feature Microsoft Keynote Speech

HostingCon 2008 is the only conference and tradeshow, focused exclusively on the hosting industry. As companies and individuals continue to expand usage of hosting services and hosted applications, hosting providers have new opportunities to provide valuable services to customers.

George A. Roberts IV, Executive Director of HostingCon 2008 noted, ”HostingCon 2008 will be a great place to learn about how cloud services will impact your hosted services business and how you can take advantage of those trends. It will also be a wonderful opportunity to network with others in the industry and get their thoughts and ideas on how they’re transforming their businesses to thrive in a cloud services future.

”The emergence of the Web as a business and consumer platform presents many new possibilities for the hosting industry, as well as a new set of challenges. While hosted services providers are rightly concerned with a new competitive landscape that includes Microsoft and others, cloud services hold the key to a bright future. Mr. Rogers spends his time talking to the industry about the choice between on-premise software and cloud services, and the important factors to consider when determining and investing in models for software and services.

Mr. Rogers explained, ”Hosting providers are contemplating the challenges and opportunities cloud computing represents. At HostingCon 2008, I look forward to sharing the exciting technology developments taking place, and initiating a dialogue about the potential concerns and opportunities for hosting service providers.”In addition to Mr. Rogers’ keynote address, HostingCon 2008’s conference program will contain a number of sessions discussing cloud computing and its impact on hosted services providers. Attendees will be able to learn how to help their customers feel comfortable with cloud services, how software as a service and open source software work together and how to employ virtualization in your infrastructure.HostingCon 2008 will feature a full three days of conference sessions, intended to allow hosting professionals the ability to expand knowledge in business, shared services, enterprise, data center, and application hosting.

HostingCon is the largest conference and trade show for the hosted services industry, this year to be spread over 56,000 square feet reserved specifically for the event, with approximately 20,000 net square feet of booth space in an easy to navigate floorplan. The exhibit hall will feature over 70 vendors displaying products and services, offering demonstrations and activities related to the hosted services industry.

Colocation, Dedicated Server Provider, DediPower, Selected for Interactive Websi

DediPower is providing all the managed hosting requirements for newsecondarycurriculum.org. In order to support the introduction and rollout of a new secondary school curriculum the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) funded the CfBT Education Trust to produce and manage an interactive support website. This will enable thousands of teachers to register, access and download information on the new curriculum that is being rolled out, including video case study downloads of schools that are already implementing the new curriculum. The site also allows teachers to plan their own curriculum requirements online via a number of interactive tools whilst also delivering a library of material to support best practice and links to valuable information and source materials.

Martin Bulmer, Head of Digital Media, Oculus noted, ”This was a challenging project involving multiple stakeholders, complex requirements and a substantial amount of content. We needed to have the very best suppliers working with us to ensure its success. In terms of our managed hosting requirements we needed a partner who could provide scalability, the ability to handle rapid and sharp increases in site traffic, ‘always on’ dependability, and the very highest levels of security. DediPower delivered on all of these requirements.”CfBT worked closely with a large number of teaching associations to provide content and advice. The site, launched in March 2008, is already extensively used, having achieved over 6,000 teacher registrations.

Mr. Bulmer added, ”We selected DediPower because it is focused on data centre efficiencies, deliver service excellence and have the depth of technical skills and knowledge that we require. This, coupled with their outstanding track record of working on mission critical online initiatives, made them the natural choice for Oculus to provide all of our managed hosting requirements.”DediPower’s Managed Hosting provides enterprises with business server solutions delivering custom built high-specification dedicated servers. This is underpinned by a world-class hosting infrastructure that has been designed to ensure the highest levels of network uptime, availability, flexibility and security. Focused on delivering support with passion, DediPower offers one of the best service level agreements in the industry today and is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and RedHat Ready Hosting Partner.

Craig Martin, CEO, DediPower commented, ”It is exciting to be a critical provider in a major government education initiative with Oculus and being selected to deliver the managed hosting requirements for this value added support service for teaching professionals. The power of the internet today enables faster access to information in a rapidly changing world, with information at your fingertips. It is great to be at the heart of such initiatives.”DediPower, one of the UK’s fastest growing managed hosting providers delivers a range of managed hosting solutions including: dedicated servers, application and exchange hosting, high availability multi-server clusters and co-location.

DediPower is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a RedHat Ready Hosting Partner. A winner of numerous awards, hosted sites include Sony, Sam Learning, Institute of Physics, Coca-Cola, Capita, First Great Western and Carphone Warehouse. Established in 1998 and self-funded, DediPower runs its own purpose built data centres totalling over 22,000 sq ft situated in Reading, UK.

The Benefits of Multiple Domain Web Hosting?

Thanks to the low charge of domain names and hosting fees it is conceivable to own many websites without breaking the bank. There are a few ways to handle multiple domains so it is vital to understand what your options are and the benefits and disadvantages of each approach.

The most elementary selection when managing multiple domains is whether to do so with the identical hosting company. Most hosts offer packages which can allow several sites to be attached to one account, or allow single sites to run under separate accounts. You may own an existing website and be delighted with the services your host provides. If you resolve to start a new website using the identical host, dealing with a company you are familiar with and trust will comfort you. You may also get a discount for each added account you open with the same host. On the other hand, using a new host for a second (or third or fourth) website can allow you to compare the quality of hosting offered by different companies. In addition, separate hosts will provide each of your web sites with a different IP address.

Having different IP addresses can be critical if you intend to link the sites together to aid in search engine optimization. Incoming links are an important pointer of how consequential a website is, so a site with many incoming links can get a higher position in search engines like Google . If all the links are coming from the same IP address, however, Google may reduce their value. Hosting your numerous sites with different hosting companies guarantees that each site has a different IP address. Individual IP addresses, however, are available at an extra cost from most web hosts. For a yearly fee each website can have its own unique IP address. This can help with search engine ranking and if you want to have a secure connection (https) on your site.

If you decide to host all your sites with the same company, there are three basic ways to go. Each site could have its own account; you could sign up for a reseller account; or you could get a dedicated server account. As a reseller you are acting as an agent for the hosting company. They apportion some disk space and bandwidth to you which you use as you please. There may be a limitation to the number of websites you can host with your reseller account. If you have space left after using this account for your own sites you could earn some extra income by selling accounts to other people. The advantage of a reseller account is the hosting company taking care of all the technical details. Some will even provide gateways for billing your customers.

A dedicated server account gives you command of all the resources of an entire server. You are free to setup as many websites as you wish and assign disk space and bandwidth as you see fit. The disadvantage to this account is that you are responsible for maintaining the server. This requires significant technical know-how so if you don't have that knowledge or don't feel like learning about it, dedicated servers are not for you. You can, of course, go with a managed dedicated server. The disadvantage of this is the higher cost involved. Hosting all your sites with one host can offer many advantages but there is one chief drawback : if your server goes down, all your sites go down. If you are depending on your sites for income this can be catastrophic. So, it is a good idea to have at least one of your sites with a different host. If your sites are essential for your livelihood and you can't manage any down time whatever, it is better to host everything with (at least) two hosts

Think about quality if you are looking for web hosting?

When you sign up for cheap web hosting, are you reallly getting a bargain? You’ve probably read the ads promising web page hosting at dirt cheap prices, but what do you really get for these low hosting prices? Let’s find out. Here are some great tips on finding low cost web hosting without sacrificing quality service.

Avoid the Freebies

Websites that offer free web site hosting usually aren’t really free when you consider the benefits you must give up. Most free web site hosting offers give you free space on another company’s website, but you are not getting actual domain hosting. You’re getting one or a few of your web pages displayed on someone else’s domain. Therefore, you can never fully promote your website or help it to reach its full potential. If the company is shut down tomorrow, your site will shut down as well.
Another disadvantage of free web page hosting is you will probably have advertisements on your web pages. At the very least, you’ll have an ad for the company that is providing the hosting space. This can cause your visitors to click out of your website before buying your products.
Even some cheap web hosting services offer similar services as the free hosts. The only difference is they charge you for poor hosting service!

Compare Virtual Host Packages

Featured services:

inexpensive hostingmultiple domain hosting,

web site builder hosting
When shopping for cheap web hosting, be sure to compare web site hosting packages - not only prices. Some key features to look for are the amount of web space you’re getting for the money. You might not need much web hosting space at the start, but as you expand, the website will grow much larger. So, you’ll most likely have to purchase more web hosting space if you don’t purchase enough at the start. In comparing low cost web hosting packages, you might be surprised at the differences in amount of web space you get when paying only a dollar or two more.
Other things to look for when comparing cheap web hosting packages include customer and technical support availability, multiple email accounts and auto responders, detailed control panel such as cPanel or a similar program, password protected directories, etc. If you need special web design integration with PHP, MySQL and databases, be sure the virtual host offers these features. Also, if you plan to resell hosting to your customers, be sure the virtual host offers reseller hosting as well.

Decide on Web Design First

Before choosing a cheap web hosting package, decide on how you will design your website. What programming language will you use in your web design? Will you need to integrate a shopping cart and/or customer database? How will you handle your customer emails? All these questions should be considered before choosing a cheap web hosting package.
Take some time to find the web site hosting service that will meet your needs, both today and in the future. Keep in mind that you will probably use your web host’s services for many years to come. Taking time now to find the best possible cheap web hosting with all the features you need will save you from many headaches in the future

Searching around for a web hosting company? Here's what to keep in mind

The current count of web hosts yields just over a gazillion companies claiming to be number 1, offering the very best in what hosting can offer with prices that simply cannot be beat. Needless to say, it can take a trained eye this day and age to see through their gimmicks and get right down to whether this company has what you want. If you're confused about what to choose, read on.

Before even beginning your search, analyze what your needs are. What features would you like your site to have? What Internet programming languages do you anticipate using? Be sure to take under consideration any feedback form features, database connectivity or any other site virtue that is simply too advanced for pure HTML. Would you like e-mail addresses? Do you have a domain name? How much traffic do you expect to receive? All these questions and more help in the final decision for that one glorious hosting company.

In the midst of your search, you'll probably run across hosting services that offer 'unlimited bandwidth'. This is simply not true. The term 'bandwidth' refers to the amount of information that is past between the hosting servers and the end user. Most hosting companies are connected to high-speed Internet backbones (UUNET, Sprint, AT&T, etc) which charge the hosting company based on their monthly bandwidth from customers. Needless to say, if you rack up upwards of 25Gigs of bandwidth a month, that lacks financial prosperity for your hosting company. Be sure to read the terms of service very carefully with each hosting company that you are considering, especially if they advertise 'free' or 'unlimited' site features. A hosting company's support services often goes untested, especially with beginners in the site design and hosting world.

A skilled and prompt support staff should be one of the most important decision breakers in your mind. If you run into trouble getting a perl script to work, or perhaps your database permissions are not setup correctly on the hosting company's side. You want those problems corrected, and fast. One way to test a service's support staff is to simply send them an e-mail and see how long it takes for a response to be sent. Try to send an inquiry to support and sales and any other department you deem necessary. Ask support if they offer a web language that you like, or ask the sales department if they charge your credit card or hire another company to do it for them. If you receive a response the same day, you can probably rest assured you will receive timely help with any inquiries you have. They should not take more than one complete day to get back to you.

Perform research away from the company's web site. Ask questions through e-mail lists and other mediums to try and get some feedback. If the company lists a testimonials section, look into contacting the authors of the testimonials and start asking questions. The more comments you have, the better understanding you'll have on how that hosting service treats its customers. Pay attention to how long they have been online. A well-established hosting company of many years will most likely yield the greatest chances of customer successes. Click on the about page if they have one and read it all; after all, you may very well be giving this company your credit card number.

Now, let's get down to the nitty gritty: Does the service offer what you want? Although you may expect your site to remain fairly small, allow yourself some room to grow, represented in megabytes (Mbs). If you're using 5Mbs, look for 10. If you're using 20Mbs, look for 30 or 40. If you are a photographer and want to use your site as a portfolio, you better opt for a more powerful account with more space and bandwidth, as images take more of both. Depending on how many images you have and how popular your site is, look for at least 50Mbs of space and 5Gigs of bandwidth. However, a regular, average size site with mostly html pages should be fine with 15 or 20Mbs and 1 or 2gigs of bandwidth and paying no more than $15 a month, depending on other features

Research prospective Hosting Providers

One of the best ways to find a Web Host is to ask other people who they use. If they have had great results from a particular company, chances are that you will also get quality service. At the same time, people who have had bad Web Hosting experiences can tell you who to avoid. Of couse this is not an absolute method for choosing a Web Host since people can have different opinions about the same Host but is is a good way to get more information on potential companies. .
Choosing the right Hosting Provider ultimately depends on your individual needs. As a result, what may constitute the perfect Web Hhost for one person may not serve the needs of another. Before you choose a Web Host, be sure to do some research and make sure the account you choose has the features you will need.

What account features will you need?

Web Hosting accounts vary widely with regards to the types of features included. Be sure to come up with a list of features that you will want. These may include email accounts, email forwarding, CGI scripts, MS FrontPage support, mailing lists, Web statistics, etc. There are many features available to potential Web Site owners, if you have specific needs, be sure to ask if they are available

Do you need access to ecommerce solutions?

If you are going to be selling products or services over the Internet, chances are that you will need some type of ecommerce solution. By this I am referring to features such as a shopping cart, secure server access and a merchant account if you want to process credit card payment. The shopping cart may only be needed if you plan on having a catalog of products available for sale. This makes shopping much easier on any potential customers. If you plan on accepting credit cards, you will also need a merchant account. This is a basically an account that allows you to process credit card payments from your customers and have the money deposited into your bank account. There are many merchant services available on the Internet, some much better than others. Merchant fees range in price from $25 to $75 per month with setup fees usually in the $100 to $800 range. RodopiPaymentGateway.com seems to be the low cost leader at only $20 per month. Be sure to research companies before making a committment.

Find the Best Web Host for Your Needs:

Due to the numerous types of Web Hosting companies that exist today, choosing the right one can sometimes be a difficult task. This article is intented to make the process a little easier for you.
The first thing you need to decide is what type of Web Site you want. For example, will it be personal or business related? Will you need ecommerce services such as a shopping cart and a merchant account? Do you have any special requirements such as the ability to run CGI scripts? Do you want your own domain name? How much can you afford to pay? The cost of Web Hosting varies widely, from free to thousands of dollars per month. However, you will find that a typical Hosting account ranges from $10 to $50 per month, depending on the features available. These are just some of the questions that you should evaluate before searching for a Web Host

Will you need a domain?

If your goal is to build an online business, then it makes sense to get yourself a domain name. The cost is $30 per years and you can register through Register.com. At each of these sites, you will be able to search the Whois database to see if your chosen domain is available. If you find the domain registration procedure intimidating, many Web Hosts will register a domain for you much more cheaply.

How much Web Site traffic to you expect?

One of the most important considerations you should make is how much traffic you expect to receive. For most Web Sites traffic is not an issue but some receive thousands of visitors per day and this puts a heavy strain on the web server. The method that Web Hosts use to determine how much traffic your site receives is called data transfer. This is not exactly the same as traffic but the more traffic you get, the more data transfer you use. Using the above 33K per page example, 2000 MB of data transfer is roughly equivelent to 60,000 page views. Most Web Hosting accounts allow you to use 1000-4000 MB of data transfer or 30,000 to 120,000 page views per month. You should use this as a guide to determine whether or not you will exceed your data transfer limit. Obviously if you are creating a new Web Site it is difficult to determine how much traffic you will receive but if you have an exosting Web Site, you should have a rough estimate

How much disk space will you need?

Although it is sometimes difficult to determine how large your Web Site will be, it is a good idea to have a rough estimate. This will allow you decide what Web Hosting account is right for you. As a rule, you can fit about 30 Web pages into 1 MB of disk space. This includes text and one or two images (at approximately 33K per page). Using this as a guide, you should estimate how large your site will be and choose an appropriate Web Hosting plan. You should also be sure to have enough room for future Web Site growth. Be sure to ask any potential Web Host about their upgrade policies in case you outgrow your current disk space limit

SiteBuilder Features:

• Easy-to-Use Web Interface - 5-Step point-and-click wizard that includes design and layout templates, page structure, sample text, and a powerful WYSIWYG editor for non-technical users.
• 500 Quality Templates - Sitebuilder includes hundreds of high quality design templates divided by categories for more convenient navigation and tutorials on how to create and add custom templates and skins.
• Many Modules - Modules make Sitebuilder even more powerful and flexible; included modules are: Blog, Image Gallery, Guestbook, eShop, Forum, Feeback, Registration, RSS Reader, Voting, Script, Area Map with Google Maps, File Download, and Flash Intro.
• Site Owner Admin Panel - Enables site owners to administer several websites by providing them with capabilities to manage site statistics, create new sites, manage existing ones, configure profile, and manage e-shop orders and more.

SiteStudio Features:

• Simple to use: SiteStudio provides step-by-step, providing simple choices regarding color, style and images. There is no software to buy, and no code to learn. In addition, there is no need to mess around with programs such as FTP or Telnet.
• Content and Design Separation: The content of the website is stored separately from the layout. This way, you can completely change the look and feel of your website in six clicks of the mouse, without ever having to retype any information.
• Complete control over color schemes: SiteStudio includes a number of built-in color combinations that look great with any layout. But if you want to add a little originality to your site, all the colors can be changed, either by using a point-and-click color picker, or, for even more control, by typing in the color as a hex number.
• Layout templates: the layout of the site is controlled by layout templates. These are created in HTML enhanced by a few additional tags for generating images. A number of layouts are included with SiteStudio, and more are added often.
• User-uploaded images: Thanks to the Image Uploader, you will be able to transfer images to your online account without ever having to leave your browser. These images can be incorporated into page content or even page design. Create an online photo album, or insert a personal picture to make it a seamless part of the page logo.
• Variety of pages: SiteStudio can be used to make many different pages. Create an online resume, or build a personal photo album. Everything is done in a simple step-by-step process that is easy to learn and to follow. You can see the list of available templates.
  Complete control over the website: With the use of Site Studio's provided settings, you can make unique and attractive web sites. For advanced users, SiteStudio provides a way to change buttons on the site.
• Advanced full screen text/HTML Rich Editor: Browser-based text editor for Internet Explorer for Windows users only. It empowers you to work with formatting, styles, tables, bullets and more. The Rich Editor allows you to copy and paste the most complex tables from a web browser or from any Office applications.

Both site builders have almost same wonderful features:

Browser-based solutions for website design and construction. You need not know anything about FTP, HTML, Telnet, HTTP, or imaging software. If you can surf the Internet, you can build your own professional looking website. Your web site will automatically be created with all the required images, including logos, buttons, and sidebars. The images can all be generated in the colors you choose, with the desired text. Even professional quality rollover buttons are as simple as selecting a specific layout.

Make a Site With Online Web Site Builder !

Usually to make own web site you must know many things: HTML, CSS etc.You must have special page building software (sometimes it's very expensive).You must know how to upload your pages to the server...

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 FBhosting, 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.