Monday, August 4, 2008

Bluehost web hosting Sucks - get the facts before you buy

We all are aware of the vitality of sites in our life today. Owing to importance and ever-increasing demand for sites has made it a lucrative career option. A site is successful only when it reaches the public and more visitors adds more to the success of the site. The support of web-hosting companies is very much in demand. There are many cheap web-hosting companies with larger than life promises. To choose a reliable service provider is like walking in mud without spoiling your shoes.
Most of the reviews of web-hosting companies are nothing more than sales pitch to trap customers. A person while going through so many reviews finds it difficult to pick the right one. There are so many web-hosting companies, who are simply on their hunt for innocent customers. The moment anyone starts showing interest in them, they do all fake promises to take out the credit card details. Later, the customers are left with frustration and loss of money. The most important step is to do a proper research before signing up with any web-hosting company.
Bluehost web-hosting service provider is a reliable service provider. If one choose to sign up with the Bluehost must follow the rules, in order to avoid any problem. The Bluehost is very particular about the customer satisfaction, and the support service that they provide is worth appreciation. Bluehost believes in working for the benefit of customers, and this is very much clear from their live chat support. The full money back guarantee of Bluehost is a very valid reason to trust them. If any customer chooses to discontinue with the service of Bluehost, the leftover amount in the account will be refunded. Suppose a customer, due to any reason chooses to discontinue with the Bluehost services after 6 months, he/she will get the refund of 6 months minus 10 USD. The Bluehost charges 10 USD for the domain name that was given at the time of joining, and after charging the amount, one is allowed to take the domain name for future use.
Bluehost has over 300 servers and each server supports around 800 domains. Therefore, it would not be realistic that all the customers will be give cent percent positive feedback, but to keep oneself on the safer side, one must collect all the relevant facts. Once all the details are handy, one should abide by all the rules while signing up and ever after. Bluehost service provider will always make sure that your site is online and available to public. Bluehost will not let your site and go down, and signing up with it is sure to bring smile and success. So, if you are on your toes to be linked up with a web-hosting service provider, pick Bluehost from the innumerable options available. The added piece of information to bring smile is that the host unlimited web sites cost you only $6.95. There is n point to delay in signing up, and the option of full money refund is always a motivating factor to keep you on the safer side.

Drupal Web Hosting Guide

What's Drupal?

Drupal is one of the best content management system. It's a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using it to power scores of different web sites, such as: Community web portals, Discussion sites, E-commerce applications and more.

Choose a Name for Your Site

First, you will need to select a domain for your Drupal web site, think about something that will make sense to your business and easy to be remembered.

Hosting Needs

Just like looking for a web hosting solution for all the other types of web site, you will need to think about your needs on disk space, monthly transfer, and emailox, etc. And in below, we will discuss some key features are needed by a Drupal site.


Linux Platform with support for php, and MySQL or PostgreSQL.

Drupal is an application developed by php, and run against MySQL or PostgreSQL. So, a support for php with database MySQL or PostgreSQL is the basic requirement for it. And we would like to suggest a Linux web hosting package considering it is the perfect platform to run php and MySQL.


Easy to use Control Panel which will allow you to maintain Database, and conduct some routine maintenance tasks for your Drupal application -

An easy to use to tool to create MySQL or PostgreSQL database and grant the access.- phpMyAdmin or phpPgAdmin to manipulate the data in the database, execute the backup or restore tasks to the data.- An editor to modify the Cron job of the system. There are many tasks need to run regularly. A permission to change the Cron file will be very helpful for the Drupal webmasters- Privilege to change the access permission of the file and directory.


Very fast connection speed to the database.

Many web hosting providers haven't optimized the connection speed between web server and database server, which cause Drupal run very slowly. This feature you will only know after installing Drupal in their environment.


Reliable web hosting service provider with courteous and professional customer support.

As an CMS web site, nothing can be more important than a stable environment.

What are the Types of Web Hosting Service?

Internet hosting service is a service that runs Internet servers, which allows organizations and individuals to serve content to the Internet service and they provide various kinds of services. Web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service. It allows many individuals and organizations to provide their own website reachable via the World Wide Web. Web hosting services are companies which supply room on a server they own which are used by their clients as well as they provide Internet connectivity, classically in a data center. Not only for their own servers but web hosting service also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers that they do not own.
There are different types of web hosting services. They are the free web hosting service, shared web hosting service, reseller web hosting service, virtual dedicated server, dedicated hosting server, managed hosting service, clustered hosting service, grid hosting, home server, Colocation web hosting service. Free web hosting is best for smaller sites with low traffic, like family sites or sites for hobbies. It is not recommended for high traffic or for real business. In this technical support is limited, and technical options are also very few. Shared web hosting service is positioned on the same server as the other sites, which range from few hundreds to thousands. Generally all domains share a common band of server possessions, such as RAM and the CPU. Reseller web hosting allows clients themselves to become web hosts. Under any combination of the list types of hosting, resellers function for the individual domains, depending on who they are associated with as a provider. They may have their own virtual dedicated server or even a colocated server. Virtual Dedicated Server makes the user feel that they are using their own dedicated server but are actually sharing a server with many others, but they're actually sharing a server with many other users. In the Dedicated hosting service the user gets their own Web server and gains a full control over it though the user typically does not own the server. In the Managed hosting service the user gets their own Web server but they are not allowed to have a full control over it though they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or the other remote management tools. The user is not allowed to have full control. Colocation web hosting service is very much similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but here the user owns the colo server. It is the most expensive and powerful type of hosting company. Clustered hosting has multiple servers hosting the same content. Grid hosting is the form of distributed hosting. Home server is usually a single machine that is placed in a private residence and it can be used to host one or more web sites from a broadband connection

Top 10 Things to Look For in a Web Host

Although this is a “top 10” list, most of the following things could easily be listed as the #1 most important consideration, so take them all seriously. It doesn’t matter if you are a large company, a small one, or just a hobbyist who wants to display photos of hand-painted electric trains. Everyone needs to consider the same things, just to different degrees.
Now, remembering that there is really no firm order to these, let us consider the top 10 things to look for in a web host:
1. Reliability (“uptime”) – Your host should be reliable, stable and fast, and should guarantee its uptime, the minimum figure for which should be 99%. A straight 99% is actually considered low these days, as 99.5% or higher is rapidly becoming the new standard. Check to see if the host provides a prorated refund if uptime falls below the stated benchmark. With how much business a company can lose any time their website is down this crucial aspect of web hosting probably does deserve to be in the #1 spot, but read on for other important info.
2. Data transfer (traffic or “bandwidth”)?– Data transfer mean the number of bytes delivered from your site to its visitors as they browse. If a web host advertises "unlimited bandwidth,” find out how much traffic the particular deal you’re considering really allows. Most new sites that are not archives, storage or “drop-send” sites normally use less than 3GB of bandwidth per month. If you expect your traffic requirements to increase over time, check the host’s policy for “overages.” If there is a charge (usually per additional GB) over the allowed bandwidth, you need to determine if it’s cheaper to pay it once in a while (if it will not be ongoing) or to upgrade your service level.
3. Disk space?– Be on guard against the "unlimited disk space" deals, too, and view them with the same skepticism as you just observed being applied to data transfer. The vast majority of sites need no more than 10-20MB of web space, so don’t fall prey to enticements like 500MB, or “unlimited space.” To get an idea of relative size, a site with about 200 pages and the usual assortment of text, pictures and motion graphics will use only about 10-15 MB for all of the pages and supporting files.
4. Technical support?– Is the tech support 24/7/365? You should probably avoid a host that has no staff working weekends or holidays since things have a habit of breaking down at the worst possible times. A claim of “24/7 support” is not always true, so test the sales pitch by e-mailing or calling on a Friday night or holiday. Measure how long it takes for you to connect with a human being on the other end. In addition response time, ensure that the support personnel are technically proficient. Believe it or not, some tech support personnel are converted sales people “learning on the job,” which is not the kind of help you need in an emergency that threatens your business.
5. Technical features (FTP, PHP, CGI-BIN access, SSI, etc.) –?What once were luxuries are now necessities. Fact is, you simply must have all of these. There are many commercial hosts that require getting their approval to install PHP or CGI scripts, which means that you cannot implement a feature on your site when you so desire. You need these functions if you want to customize error pages, maintain databases, set up additional security measures and so forth. Make sure you have full access to these tools, and find out about any restrictions on their use.
6. Server type?– The operating system and server can be very important, and there are good, practical reasons for choosing one server over another. If you intend to take advantage of ASP, for example, it is available only on a Windows NT/2000/XP server. However, it is often cheaper to go with a Unix system running the Apache server software, which is stable and dependable. Another advantage of Unix-based hosts –using Linux, FreeBSD, etc. – is that an Apache web server lets you create and manage error pages, block IP addresses, stop email harvesters and more, without needing your host to install or approve a thing. Finally, if you plan to do some e-commerce on your site, find out if you get SSL (Secure Socket Layer), MySQL and a shopping cart. At the very least, you will need SSL if you plan to get credit card information from your customers over the Internet.
7. Email services – You have your own domain now, so you probably want e-mail addresses with the domain name. Although the vast majority of plans include e-mail services, find out about the quality and level of auto-responders, mail forwarding? and list management. Ensure that you also have web access to your mail (“webmail”) and investigate the spam tools that are provided.
8. Control panel?– It may be called this, it may be called your “Net Tool Kit,” but all hosts give you a set of utilities to manage the particulars of your web account, and a web page from which to do it, too. You need to be able to manage your e-mail, change passwords, block spammers and so on. These are all standard maintenance chores for webmasters and if you have to wait on your host’s tech support to take care of things, you will lose important control over your business.
9. Price and payment plans –?Naturally, price is always a consideration, but remember that the most expensive hosts are not necessarily the best. Factor in price, and be wary of great price differentials on similar plans. Most web hosts offer annual or even quarterly payment plans that discount the monthly rate, but if you are using a new or less-well-known host, you should consider paying monthly until you establish their reliability. When you are satisfied with the host, you can change your payment plan and grab that discount.
10. Reviews – What do others say about the hosts? Use Google to track down both complaints and congratulations, and consider the source of each comment. There’s a lot to do, but with your business possibly at stake – or at least the fate of those model train photos – you can’t be too careful. Get the information you need to make an informed decision, and weigh things carefully. You will save yourself a good deal of frustration if you do.

Do you understand the importance of Domain Names Servers?

Whenever you spend time on the Internet whether you are browsing or sending an email you are making use of a domain name server without even being consciously aware of it. Even though the work done by a domain name server is hidden it is extremely important as without domain name servers the Internet would shut down very rapidly.
A domain name server acts as a phone book for the Internet by translating computer host names such as www.example.com into an IP address. Translating domain names into IP addresses sounds like a simple task but due to the fact there are billions of IP addresses currently in use and most computers have a human readable name as well as the fact there are a billions of DNS requests made every day, for example a single person can easily make a hundred or more DNS requests a day and domain names and IP addresses change daily as well as the fact millions of new domain names get created daily, this simple task can turn a lot more complicated than first anticipated. A domain name server is also a database but it is a database that is unlike any other as it gets many requests and has millions of people changing it everyday, which is what makes it unique.
Each domain name consists of two parts - the Mid Level Domain (MLD), and the Top Level Domain (TLD). The Mid Level Domain is the Ford in Ford.com, the Concrete-Home in Concrete-Home.com. This part of the domain name can consist of up to 63 characters in .com, .net, or .org domains. Only letters, numbers, or hyphens are permitted; no underbars, exclamation marks or periods. The Top Level Domain refers to the .com, .net, or .org part of the web address. It is the mid level domain name that these domain name servers work on and change into an IP address in order for your web site address request to be noted and found.
As well as being able to direct you to the website that you wish to visit, a domain name server, known in short as DNS also stores other information such as a list of mail servers that accept email for a given domain. By providing a worldwide keyword-based redirection service, the Domain Name System is an essential component of contemporary Internet use.
The Domain Name Server distributes the responsibility for assigning domain names and mapping them to IP networks by allowing an authoritative name server for each domain to keep track of its own changes, avoiding the need for a central register to be continually consulted and updated. Above all, the DNS makes it possible to assign domain names to organizations independent of the physical routing hierarchy represented by the numerical IP address. Because of this, hyperlinks and Internet contact information can remain the same, whatever the current IP routing arrangements may be, and can take a human-readable form (such as "example.com").
Domain name servers make it possible for us to use the Internet for browsing purposes, purchasing purposes and sending emails. Whatever you use the Internet for you will be using the help of a domain name server.
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