How Much Control Do You Need Over Your Server?

One of the features that enables you gain more control of your site is using control panels. Even if you are not good technically, and not aware of many software programs, using control panel help you use the required features and have some control over your site.

The following points discuss the extent of control that you should have, based on your technical skills.

Beginner A - If you are a beginner and are using a basic static site, you should have FTP access, or the ability to upload files using a web based control panel. Learn how to setup email accounts by yourself.

Beginner B – If you are a beginner and are using an advanced business website, you should use a good control panel that provides you a variety of features. These features include adding email addresses, manage your data and files, and checking your site statistics in one easy location.

Beginner C – If you are a beginner and your site is hosted at a dedicated server, you get a variety of advanced options to control your server. The best option is to use a control panel, for example WebHostManager. This is a powerful control panel and enables you to have some control for basic features in an easy-to-use interface.

Expert A – If you are an expert and have a simple site, you should be able to have CGI access and control over the basics of your site.

Expert B – If you are an expert and are using an advanced or business website, you should have more control over the servers. You should be able to run, monitor, or block certain IPs from your site.

Expert C – If you are an expert and use a dedicated server for your site, you should be technically well equipped to perform different operations. You will need to have root access to your server, the ability to restart your server on your own, advanced mail functions, and many other important utilities.

You may not be technically skilled, or your schedule may not allow you to spend time on server settings, but a couple of hours every week are sufficient to have the required control over the server.

Does Your Hosting Company Offer a Back-up Service?

Imagine what happens to your business if your server crashes, and you lose your website. To add to it, you get know that the host doesn’t have latest backup of your site. Though you have a backup of your site, you may not always remember to take backup after every last update. You should let the host take responsibility of regular, timely, and latest backups, even if you have to pay a few extra bucks.

The hosting service providers are professionals and taking backup is a part of their routine job. It is easy to lose your data; just an improperly installed program can destroy your site within seconds. So, backup is one of the important tasks for a web host.

One of the better alternatives of ensuring regular and timely backups is an automatic back-up system for your site. There are programs that enable the hosting service provider to schedule a periodic backup. The frequency of backups depends on the design and purpose of your site. For a small site, or for a personal site, a monthly backup is a good option.

Apart from monthly backups, you can take backup whenever you update your site. However, for a reasonably large site, which requires daily user interaction in high volume, backup should be planned on a daily basis. This ensures that you don’t lose track of customer transactions, even for a single day.

If you don’t plan to update your content on a regular basis, a monthly back-up will be sufficient to protect your data. You may need to update some files, but for the most part, you should be perfectly covered.

Another useful option is to plan your backup whenever you have update yours site. This ensures that you always have the backup of the latest site. For example, if you update your site once a week, you should find a host that offers weekly back-ups of your server. Apart from ensuring that the host takes backup responsibly, ensure that you can access the backup if the live site is not available at server. Note down the location where the backup is placed on the server.

Bandwidth Throttling

Bandwidth throttling ensures that a bandwidth intensive device, for example a server, limits the quantity of data that it transmits or accepts within a specified time period. Bandwidth throttling enables proper quality of service by limiting network congestion and server crashes.
There are times when the hit rate at some particular location of your site is maximized, and your server may not be equipped to handle the increased congestion. It may lead to server crash, and hence site downtime. A bandwidth throttling device is a good solution as it blocks the user requests when the server reaches the bandwidth limit. It moves the users in a queue and their requested are processed, as soon as the bandwidth requirements gets a little below than acceptable level.

In case of shared hosting, let’s say that you have a written agreement with your host that the other sites will not have any issues if your site begins to use too many resources at a time. Note that the host might have signed same contracts with other site owners whose sites are hosted at the same server. In a situation where you see a sudden increase in volume of transactions of your site, you will see that your site is disabled so that it does not affect other sites.

When you enable bandwidth throttling, Internet Information Services (IIS) activates a set of counters to monitor it in System Monitor – SysMon. These counters can be identified by "Async I/O" in the counter name. These counters are active only when bandwidth throttling is enabled.
If the bandwidth used approaches the maximum limit set by the user, bandwidth throttling blocks read requests, but allows write requests and transmission requests. Read requests are blocked first, because they are likely to result in further requests. Bandwidth throttling usually enables you to continue the user interaction session, for example – if you are submitting a
feedback request.

Even the best service providers can only serve as much bandwidth as one is capable of. Even in case of a dedicated server, if the site load exceeds specified limits, the site can be in trouble. So, the need to have a bandwidth throttling device increases tremendously when hundreds of sites are hosted on a single server as in case of shared hosting.

Easy Steps to Host your Own Website

It is advisable that unless you are a web hosting expert, you should get your website hosted through a professional web hosting service provider. However, if you feel that you have the requisite web hosting knowledge, and you believe that you can manage the technical intricacies involved in the web hosting processes; there is no reason why you can’t be your own web host.

Here are some easy steps to host your own website.

Install a web server
Web server refers to a program that responds to the requests of your website users, and thus enables your website to run smoothly. Installing a web server is the first step towards hosting a website.

Configure the web server
Configuring the web server means apprising your web server of the exact location of your web server.

Buy a domain name
Domain name refers to name of your website - the name by which people will call and recognize your website. So, you have to buy a domain name, and it does not cost the earth.

Configure DNS
Configuring the DNS means connecting the website name with your computer’s IP address.

Configure the router
Configuring the router means apprising your router of the computer that contains your web pages.

Securing the server
Having done everything to host your website, you should ensure that your web server is guarded against all kinds of nasty programs. You can protect your server by installing the requisite software.

Downtime and Web Hosting

Downtime refers to the period of time when your website might be unavailable to users, or the period of time when the users might have to experience truncated speed. While offering a web hosting deal, web hosting service providers usually apprise you of the downtime.
While assessing the various aspects of downtime, you must keep in mind the duration of downtime as well as the time of occurrence of the downtime. All these things should be discussed in advance. Usually, web hosting service providers don’t like delineating all these details, so you got to ask them.

You should acquaint your web hosting service provider with your peak business hours. Imagine a situation wherein one of your customers is about to complete a transaction, and the web page conks out. Oops! There is noting more irritating than this. You are running your business via your website, and if it fails to serve the purpose due to downtime, continuing with your current web host would be an absolute stupidity.

Here are a few things you must be clear about to deal with downtime.

• What are my peak business hours?
• What are my dozing business hours?
• How much downtime is acceptable during dozing business hours?
• What is the frequency of monitoring intervals?
• What is the duration of monitoring intervals?
• Is it actual monitoring?
• Will my web host be able to provide me with zero downtime during peak business hours?
• What is the total downtime for a month?
• What is the total downtime for each day?

Check Your Web Host’s Uptime

Uptime! Well, undoubtedly, it is one of the most important aspects of any web hosting deal. People all over the world yen for that magic 99.99% website uptime. Believe it or not, it is a real challenge for the web hosting service providers to provide you with 99.99% website uptime. And it’s quite drolly that every other web hosting service provider claims to provide you with a 99.99% uptime.

Therefore, it is your responsibility to correctly gauge whether or not your web hosting service provider can actually offer the magical uptime it promises. But before that, you need to understand what exactly does 99.99% website uptime mean. It will help you put things into perspective.

In simple words, 99.99% website uptime means that the total downtime for your website during a month does not exceed 40 minutes. Now, you can easily gauge the downtime for a day.
This is not all. Another aspect that you must take into account is the usual time of the day when the downtime occurs. You would not mind a downtime at the dozing business hours. However, if the downtime takes place at the peak business hours, it will rile you a lot. And in such a case, even the 99.99% uptime will not be able to please you, and rightly so!

The web hosting service providers that are actually able to provide 99.99% website uptime keep the monitoring intervals really short. Monitoring intervals refer to the time periods when the web hosting service provider checks the server to ensure that everything is working fine.

Ideally, for a web hosting service provider that claims to provide you with 99.9% uptime, the monitoring interval for each day should not exceed five minutes. And if it does, there is every reason for you to believe that your web hosting service provider is not giving you the promised 99.99% uptime.

How to Determine the Space and Bandwidth You Need?

Bandwidth is the amount of data that can transfer across a communication channel. A number of factors such as purpose of your site, your business goals, the kind of users you want, and the design of your site can help you know how much bandwidth you require to make your website a success.

For example, a plain text website may require very little bandwidth than a site that has audio and video files. The amount of space and bandwidth increases if the site has more images, or audio and video files.

On an average, you require about 2MB space if you have ten web pages including five or six images. In addition, the amount of data transfer also determines the required bandwidth. Greater and frequent data transfer requires more bandwidth. So, the complete design of site determines how much bandwidth your site requires.

Here are a few tips with regard to bandwidth.

• Make sure that your host provides you with good data transfer speed along with required bandwidth. If your host does not do so, the rate of data transfer will be too low, as the number of visitors access the same component of web page, at the same time.

• One of the better options to tackle this bandwidth and data transfer issue is to keep your site as simple as possible. A flashy site with lots of graphics and flyers may not necessarily invite more visitors, or may not fetch you more business. Do not use user interactive features if your business doesn’t logically requires it. This adds to the cost, maintenance, and moreover, the ultimate purpose of site is lost if the user has to wait for five minutes to submit a feedback form.

• Proper image size and file types also help you reduce the bandwidth requirement. If you still have doubts as to how much bandwidth your site requires, your host can guide you by looking at the site, and suggest the best web hosting plan for your website requirements.

How to avoid Downtime for your Website?

Imagine that your website gives three days to its users to avail special discount for one of the services of your company, and the server where the site is hosted loses connection dues to a technical error. Such situations can wreck your business. Even a best quality dedicated server hosted by a good service provider may encounter a technical problem. If you can’t afford your site to be unavailable even for a few hours, you should seek an alternative.

A few good web hosting service providers offer an alternative solution – where you can ensure that your site is never down, not even for a few hours. An excellent DNS feature – Round Robin takes care of this issue where a particular IP address is fetched from a pool of IP addresses. This feature uses a technology where your domain name is mapped to more than one IP address on different servers.

The site is hosted at multiple servers and a Failover Monitor keeps a track on your web servers by sending data to a URL. When one of your IP addresses returns an error, the system pulls that IP address out of the list and the DNS adjusts your domain name to another working IP address.

As soon as the faulty IP address comes back online, the system restores it back to IP pool. This ensures that your site is always online, even if there is some problem in one of your web servers.

This system results in the downtime time of as low as fifteen minutes. This is the time taken in caching the IP information from different servers. A couple of factors that determine this caching time are – the connection speed of your site and the reason behind the failure. To ensure best results, your service provider can set the caching time for DNS information.

There is another option where even the time required to fetch the IP address from cache is also not consumed. A failure monitor that is based on an expensive hardware system can point a virtual IP address to other IP address on different servers. This involves very little downtime of a few minutes. This technology ensures almost 99.99995% uptime, and is available only with reputed hosting service providers.

Advanced Hosting Options

One of the most frequent complaints that you get regarding your site is that it is slow. If your business requires a good website and cannot afford slow connection speed or slow download speed, you should select a good advanced web hosting option.

In nine out of ten cases, the reason behind slow load time for your web pages is cramped working of the gateway. You are not satisfied with the answer, but there is nothing really that you can do about it. Two of the best advanced options that specifically take care of speed of your site are discussed below.

SSL Accelerators
Using an SSL accelerator is a simple solution. An SSL accelerator is based on Secure Sockets Layer protocol. It is a PCI card that your web host installs on the server where your site is hosted. Experienced web host knows how to use SSL for best results. A PCI card is inserted in the server and you see that the performance of your site has improved dramatically.
Using an SSL accelerator is a part of many hosting plans available with the service providers. If your site requires a large area, you should request your host to provide SSL accelerators.

Traceroute
A traceroute is a mechanism that traces a data packet from your computer to your host, showing at how many points, the packet is routed to reach the host, and how long each hop from one router to another takes. If the pages are loaded slowly in your website, you can use traceroute to figure out where the longest delays are occurring. This number can be large in case of a reseller company.

Traceroute is a common component for hosts that are experienced in networking business. A good host uses a traceroute on the server where your site is hosted. Using a traceroute has many benefits. Traceroute can be used to track hackers, particularly if your site is hosted at a dedicated server. The traceroute is based on a mechanism that you can also help you find out who is responsible for DDOS attacks.

Web Hosting Control Panel Options

Control Panel refers to the software installed to the server where the site is hosted. This software helps you control different features that enable you or a service provider to host your web site. The features include your FTP accounts, email accounts, and databases. It also includes the feature to update database (if required) and the rights to manage data files. So, these features make a web hosting control panel an important component, and the success or failure of your web hosting experience depends largely on it.

Every service provider has its own set of preferences for a control panel for your web site. You need to ensure that the features and rights available to you for your site meet the minimum requirements of your site. Some of the factors that can help you select a reasonable control panel are – the purpose behind hosting your website, the audience it is targeted at, the kind of interaction it invites from the site visitors, and the frequency of updates it requires.

Different control panels available with service providers depend on the platform where the site is to be hosted. For example - H-Sphere, cPanel, Plesk, Sphera, Vdeck, and Ensim. All these control panels have different features. You can select the one for you after doing some research on the options available with your service provider. For example - Ensim is easy to use only if you have some experience in using it, and H=Sphere supports Windows as well as Linux.

If you do not have any prior knowledge of control panels and you are not good at getting used to new software; you can ask for free demonstrations of all the control panels that your service provider can provide.

Analyze the different combinations of control panels with different platforms. This enables you to get an insight into how to use the various available features. Besides, you also get to know about other options available if you plan to move your site to some other service provider in future.

How Location is important for Hosting?

Apart from the major factors that you consider while selecting a proper web hosting service provider, the less talked about, but equally important factor is the server location. Yes, the location where the site is hosted. This is really important for proper search engine optimization utilization.

The location has significant impact on search results as many of them can be country specific. So, it can be an advantage for you if the search is targeted in local area where the site is hosted. This will enable you to maximize your search results. At the same time, you are at huge disadvantage if the site is not hosted at a location where you intend to target the users.

Since the results of major search engines are more inclined towards those sites that are physically located within your geographic area; the country where your site gets hosted becomes an important factor. For example, if your site is hosted in UK, a search engine may provide different results if the same content is searched across UK, or in Australia, or at any distant location across the globe.

One more reason as to why the location of hosting a site is important is the purpose of your site. If you intend to sell a product, or provide services that involve great user interaction, within a specific range of area around you, it is recommended that your site's IP address is within the specific country's IP address range. Search engines identify the location of searching sources by IP addresses of their computers.

At the same time, if you are targeting the users that are at some distant location, across the continents, then you should get your site hosted in that geographic area. This will ensure that your site is locally available to the end users. It may be an expensive option; however, going for a cheaper option and hosting a site away from the target user will ultimately lead to low traffic and impacts badly on the business.

If your business extends over users of multiple locations, across different countries, you should get your site translated into multiple languages, within the same design specifications, and at multiple locations. This means that different kinds of users across distant locations get access to your site in their own language, which is a huge benefit. It portrays a positive image of you as a web hosting company.

Web Hosting FAQs

It is important for you to acquaint yourself with the various key aspects of web hosting processes. Web hosting is not a complex subject. You can easily grasp the various web hosting concepts. The knowledge of these web hosting concepts will not only enable you to put things into perspective, but also helps you make the right choice while choosing a web hosting service provider.

Here are some key FAQs with regard to web hosting.

What does a web hosting company do?

To make your website available online, you need to host your website on a server. A web hosting company offers server space to your website. And you have to pay certain fee to a web hosting company for its services.

Does a web hosting company charge a mammoth fee for its services?
Well, the costs depend on the kind of services you are planning to have. By and large, you can get the desired web hosting services at reasonable rates. In fact, there are hordes of web hosting service providers available in the market. You can easily get the services at a price that suits your budget.

Usually, you need to pay around $20 to $50 every month for a 50MB space. But again, it all boils down to the services you want and the web hosting service provider you have engaged.

I am confused as to which web host should I pick?

This is a common problem. The market is awash with so many web hosting companies that you can get befuddled. All the web hosting packages offered by different web hosting companies appear to be similar.

This necessitates the importance of correctly understanding your requirements as well as your budget. Besides, you should look for some basic web hosting features as mentioned below.
• Does a web host provide fast and consistent connections?
• Does your web host provide adequate back-up systems?
• Does your web host charge any set-up fee?
• Does your web host provide 24/7 customer support?
• Does your web host provide you with a domain name?

Key features to be looked for while choosing a web host

While zeroing in on a web hosting service provider, you should ensure that it provides you with the basic web hosting features. These features are provided irrespective of the web hosting package you are planning to purchase. If any web hosting service provider does not give you the basic web hosting features, you should move on to look for someone else.

Here is a list of some key features that you must look for while choosing a web hosting service provider.

• Adequate server space and bandwidth. You must get a minimum of 20MB to 50MB of server space.
• 24/7 customer support
• Your own domain name
• A minimum of 10GB of monthly transfer
• Unlimited true POP email accounts
• Proper email forwarding facility
• Unlimited free access to your server via FTP or Telnet
• Unlimited auto-responders
• Server Side Includes (SSI) support
• Unrestricted CGI-Bin
• MySQL Database
• Proper password protection
• Perl
• Unrestricted access to SSL encryption to ensure secure transactions
• Data and information on your website traffic
• Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions
• Access to your log files
• Referral Program

Key Features of Yahoo Web Hosting

Are you looking for a good web hosting option? Well, the fact is that there are so many available in the market. You just need to ascertain your requirements, so that you can pick the one that suits you the best. Many people opt for big hosting names like Yahoo. Yahoo can be good option for you as well. Yahoo web hosting is aptly equipped with some good features that make it a good choice.

Here are some key features of Yahoo web hosting.

Enticing Introductory Packages
Yahoo web hosting usually offers enticing introductory packages. These packages include a lot of features such as free domain name, website management, database and scripting tools, web enhancements, free set-up, truncated rates, low monthly costs, marketing discounts, and other add-on features.

Website Building Tools
Yahoo offers some effective tools that enable you to build your own website. This is a huge advantage, for you don’t have to pay extra dollars for creating a website. Yahoo gives lots of design templates. You just have to choose the one you like. Yahoo Site Builder can really help you create good professional websites.

Security
Yahoo web hosting offers hi-tech, advanced security to your website. Yahoo not only protects your website’s information, but also ensures that your website is aptly guarded against any kind of domain hijacking.
Yahoo gives proper password protection as well. Furthermore, Yahoo provides requisite encryption and SSL certificates to enable you to safely transfer secret and sensitive information.

Email Addresses
Yahoo web hosting provides you with a personal email address and also gives you your own email space. Not just this! Yahoo offers sturdy software that protects your mails from any kind of spam.

Excellent Customer Support
Yahoo ensures that you get consistent 24/7 customer support. Yahoo provides both telephonic and email support. You don’t have to wait for ages to get your problems solved.

How to promote web hosting business

If you are planning to be a web host, you need to acquaint yourself with all the aspects of web hosting. You got to understand the web hosting business dynamics. Furthermore, you should be aware of the new technological breakthroughs and ideas. Besides, kicking off your web host business is easier than promoting it. You have to be steadfast and wise to successfully promote your web hosting business.

The market is awash with all kinds of web hosting service providers. And it is a real arduous task to excel in such a fierce competition. This accentuates the importance of consistently promoting your business. There are quite a few useful and legitimate ways that enable you to successfully promote your web hosting business.

Referral program is a significant way of promoting your web hosting business. Referral program enables you to get new customers. You just have to provide your existing customers with a system that enables them to refer new customers. You have to create a tracking system through which your current customers are able to connect you to their friends and acquaintances.

The customers who refer new people get certain commission from you. All you need to do is to ask your existing customers to sign-up for your referral program. You create an account for them that enables them to keep track of their details and referral earnings. Over the years, referral program has proved itself to be an effective way of promoting web hosting business. However, you must ensure that the tracking system works well for you as well as your customers. All your customers who help you increase your customer base are provided with the best of services.

Another useful way of promoting your web hosting business is Forum Discussions. You should join forum discussions that discuss web hosting. These forums enable you to get more knowledge with regard to web hosting. Besides, you can reach out to a lot of people. You can help others by offering your suggestions and services. You should always post your website URL in all your discussions.