Here are some factors to help you evaluate your website needs

Paid or free hosting service

If you wanted to start a personal website, you may opt for a free hosting service. Most free hosting plan has a limited web space and bandwidth. You might also need to add advertisements from the company who is giving you the free service.

On the other hand, if you want a website for business, you should have a paid hosting service. This way, you can ask for technical support anytime you need it. You can also choose the amount of disk space and bandwidth that your website needs.

Webspace

Webspace is also termed as disk space or storage space. This basically works like your hard disk in your desktop computer. It pertains to the amount of data that your website can handle. For example if you are working with html pages and a few images, you can work with a disk space of no bigger than 1 GB. But if you are talking about massive internet applications or audio and video files then you need more space than that.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth would mean the amount of data transferred over an internet connection. If you think that your website would have frequent visitors, you would need to have a larger bandwidth. If you would offer downloadable and other applications that would be used within the boundaries of your website, you should definitely request for a large bandwidth.

Operating System

You also have a number of choices for an operating system that you can use for your website. You can choose from Linux, UNIX, Windows, or Apple.

Discount web hosting services are readily available and many of them are good enough for anyone whose needs are standard and not too demanding. The reason why it is possible to get discount web hosting services is that resellers generally buy web space in bulk from an ISP (internet service provider) and then resell the space to customers at a cheaper price.

There are several different components that make up discount web hosting service. These components in turn allow you, the end user, to upload your files, documents, data as well as other forms of electronically created content in the web space offered at a discounted price and you can do all this in a convenient and cost effective manner. Generally, it also means that software running on the server will run HTTP or Hypertext Transfer Protocol in order to deliver image files as well as HTML pages. In addition, you also can transfer files with the help of software known as FTP or file transfer protocol.

Great Demand

Even though you may not be paying top dollar for your web hosting service, discount web hosting services are still good enough to offer you sufficient amount of disk space as well as reasonably fast transfer speeds to make such packages quite attractive. In fact, because of greater demand for discount web hosting there are more and more web hosts mushrooming up that are providing a variety of web hosting plans including discount web hosting plans.

In order to reap maximum benefits from a discount web hosting package it is advisable that you do an exhaustive comparison of various such plans and use certain criteria in order to properly evaluate each different discount web hosting plan. You therefore will need to look at criteria such as the price, the profile of the web host, level of customer support, especially online support, and you also need to consider scalability before arriving at a decision.

You need to also compare discount web hosting packages on the basis of service offered, type of platform (UNIX or NT), space offered, traffic as well as email capabilities. At present, online businesses are booming and there are therefore many businesses that are dealing with ecommerce. So, it follows that these users also need to look around for suitable ecommerce web hosting.

To get the best deal, you will however, need to read up reviews (made by experts as well as by customers) and then do your own comparisons of various discount web hosting plans. Once you find some that suit you, you will then need to grade the best among the many and the one that scores the highest marks should be your pick.

When you look for hosting, the first thing you are usually going to look for is the amount of space and bandwidth that each hosting provider provides, for some people, this is as far as they need to look, for other people, they need to look further into the hosting provided. The server that you decide to use is in fact just a PC like the one you are using now, the only diffrence is that more often than not, a server will be much faster and possibly hold more space, it is when you realize this that you can apply the other aspects to picking the best web host, you just have to think about what makes your computer better than your friends(an example), we can then go into the realm of processor speed, operating system, RAM and the internet connection, these aspects are quite often the reason why one host may seem more expensive than another.

When choosing the best host for yourself, you may not need a fast processor or alot of RAM, you may only need 250 MB space, if you cut back on what you buy to as far as you need then you will get just what you need on a much cheaper budget, for example, if you need to host a website that is only 50 MB in size, you would be better off getting a hosting package with 250MB space, than a hosting package with 1,000 MB space. The same applies for bandwidth, RAM and processor speed. The operating system you use can also vary depending on how you want your site to run, UNIX and Linux servers are well known for having much better security than Microsoft servers, however, you may not need much security for your website, and there are other aspects to choosing the right operating for you. Diffrent operating systems also support diffrent languages that can be used in creating your site, all servers are able to support HTML but, some people are now looking to create dynamic websites.

HTML is a static language, it outputs information on your screen, and this information does not change, dynamic languages allow the content to change, there are also diffrent types of dynamic languages, these are server side, and client side, server side script execute on the server and then are able to output as HTML, for server side scripts to work, the server needs to have the correct software installed. Client side script exacutes on the computer of the person who is viewing the website, this means that the person viewing the website must have the correct software installed to be able to view it.

When it comes to server side scripts, the servers operating system can play a major role in what scripts you decide to use. Microsoft servers support a language called ASP, only Microsoft servers can run ASP and Microsoft charges money for their software, linux servers equivalent is PHP, PHP is much more used and most hosting professionals believe it is much beter, PHP as well as linux is open source, this allows people to modify how the programs themselves work, another good point is that they are totally free! The most common setup for a server is called the LAMP setup, this stands for Linux Apache MySQL and PHP. Apache is the server program that runs on the server and manages all of the requests by users accessing the server. MySQL is a type of database that can be used to store information on your server, you may need a diffrent amount of MySQL databases depending on the content of your website and some web hosts provide a limited amount of MySQL databases so it is essential that you get the right amount for you.

Other important factors when choosing a hosting provider are the type of control panel provided and the support provided by the web hosting company. Cpanel is the standard when it comes to linux web hosting, it includes many user friendly features like easy script installation, email account management and visitor statistics.

This is only a brief overview of web hosting and what you need to get started. It is always advised to discuss your requirements with your hosting provider. A reputed web hosting company will always guide you to choose the right plan for you or your business.

We have numerous other articles written on this very subject. Each one tackles a different aspect of this complex topic.

Linux Servers Advantages

Linux servers have been known to run for long periods of time lacking nominal difficulties or down time being experienced, which is a believeable achievement while many Microsoft servers indigence to refresh and reboot their working methods at frequent intervals.

Linux establishations have no known vulnerabilities in their security working method; however, it is still believeed a priority of Linux to keep their methods operation with the best level of security around.

In the introduction, we saw how this subject can be beneficial to anyone. We will continue by explaining the basics of this topic.

Linux also presents its customers the added gain of cheaper Linux based web hosting solutions. This is chiefly due to open find distributions; hosts usually lapse these savings against their customers, making Linux web hosting solutions very affordable.

Disgains of Linux Servers

With every gain of a hosting solution, there has to be disgains as well, Linux hosting solutions are no exclusion to this statute. One of the highest disgains of Linux based applications is that they are powerless to accommodate windows applications and the coding conversions. This can indicate calamity for websites that have been hinted especially for windows based applications.

When choosing a web hosting bringer for Linux, make effective he presents all the necessarys army on security, counting firewall, worry stability for the servers, rejection of argument (DOS) protection.

Also, there are some necessarys army any web hosting service should involve, such as MYSQL army, statistics (preferably two speechs), antivirus and antispam army (added or involved) and the possibility to add your own speechs via FTP. If your web hosting service bringer doesn’t involve SSH access (this is very ordinary), make effective they can present you verify to establish those speechs. Of course, if your speech presents a security flaw, your web hosting bringer may ask you to change it or deny establishing it altogether.

Windows web hosting servers

Windows web hosting solutions provide many payback such as NET verify, ASP, visual necessary C++ and treasure speechs. Windows are also known for their dynamic page displays. All windows hosting policy, as well as MSSql for more experienced webmasters verify the Microsoft Access 2000 record and are usually relaxed and sound dispatch to direct codes to.

though Windows hosting post present a large number of payback and extras, the actuality that they have the odd security tricky, are flat to down time, and scheduled rebooting on a frequent beginning rehighests a viable disgain to with windows servers as a web hosting solution.

While the picking of a web-hosting server is an individual resolve, those looking for a hosting solution should believe the payback and disgains of both windows and Linux severs before making a picking.

When we begin to bring this information together, it starts to form the main idea of what this subject is about.

When considering the best web hosting plan available for you, take into consideration what your web hosting needs are and the plans for your website in the future. For companies that have no clue what type of web hosting plan they will need, we suggest that you start with a plan in $5-$10 dollar range then move change you plan once you have decided what you need.

Deciding which is Best

In deciding which is the best web hosting service you should look at reseller accounts. This is because resellers have begun to offer web hosting plans at much lower rates that web hosting services. Having experience with the most sought after hosting plans available today, it is known that if you are paying more than $20 a month for the service, you are paying too much.

The best web hosting plan will be easy once you find out if your website will feature a control panel for making changes to the pages, adding files and graphics to the site, or deleting unnecessary files. Then deciding if you will need a Unix or Windows platform for your web hosting plan will be dependant upon what you plan to do with your website.

Knowing the Features

Knowing the features of the best web hosting plans is essential to your business success. After all you will not want to pay for something that you are not getting or will not need with your hosting plan. When looking for a web hosting plan you will want to make sure that they offer email support 24 hours a day and are available seven days a week. Live online web hosting support is essential to your web hosting account.
Offering a variety of different options, either type of web hosting plan may be what you need. Now keep in mind that not all software can be used with both types of web hosting plans, so knowing which is the best web hosting plan for you, is a requirement. Typically to choose the best web hosting plan will be to make sure that you are getting all the features, have enough space and can grow if you website needs to.

A web hosting provider will typically have a fast connection to the Internet housed in a physical building called ‘data center’ and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide web.

With a well-managed web host, you can free yourself from worrying the up-keep of complicated server technology and proper technical maintenance. That’s the whole purpose of the web hosting companies. You should leave the technical work to web hosting professional while you focus on your own internet business.

There are thousands of web hosting providers on the internet and how do you decide which one you should use? Sites like betahosts.com can help you by comparing all best hosting providers.

The features that web hosting companies are offering are getting quite standard nowadays. There are basic features that you’ll need in a web host. You can find out more here.

To give a web host a competitive edge over others, more attractive features are very necessary. You’ll find that many hosts are willing to give away free stuff that used to cost over $10 per month.

These are some of the advanced features that our top hosts are offering.

Web Buider Many of our top 10 hosts offer powerful web builder program called SiteStudio. SiteStudio allows you to make sites without any html, FTP and HTTP knowledge. You can also build site on the fly while at home, school or even at work. Hostgator’s SiteStudio has over 500 ready-made templates for you to choose from.

Ecommerce Enabled If you are selling products on your site, you need a merchant account. A shopping cart is a useful tool if you have more than 1 product in different categories. SSL(Secured Sockets Layer) is a must-have if you need to receive valuable information such as your customers’ credit card information. PowWeb, Hostgator and Lunarpages provide osCommerce shopping cart and shared SSL for your ecommerce needs.

Marketing Package Most marketing package including search engine submission software, keyword generator and link checker. Some hosting companies like iPower have established partnership with Yahoo! Search (previously known as Overture) and Google Adwords to offer you pay-per-click credit to jump start your business.

Popularity

The best marketing method is by far from word of mouth. If you sign up for a web host and are satisfied with the performance, most likely you’ll recommend to anyone who is looking for a good host. Big web hosting companies know about this concept so well that they would go all out to retain their existing customer. The more satisfied customers they have, the more popularity they’ll get. We take this as an important indicator of how good a host is. # There are a few factors that we judge the popularity of a particular web hosting provider.Number of existing customers. # The satisfaction level of their existing customers: We manage to get hold of their existing customers from the positive reviews they submitted through our host comment form, their comment in the 3rd party web hosting and inhouse forums and the customers’ comment found on other hosting directories. # The amount of pretigious hosting awards they won # Their sites Alexa traffic ranking

Netfirms top the popularity among our top 10 hosts. Network Reliability, Speed and Uptime Guarantee

In terms of reliability, we are looking at how redundant is the server, how often the companies backup the server and how well they handle emergency. “Redundant” means that if any of the Internet connections get interrupted, the alternate Internet connection will take over. PowWeb Load Balancing Technology is one of the best that we found to ensure your site is up 99.9% all the time.

A web hosting provider will typically have a fast connection to the Internet housed in a physical building called ‘data center’ and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide web.

With a well-managed web host, you can free yourself from worrying the up-keep of complicated server technology and proper technical maintenance. That’s the whole purpose of the web hosting companies. You should leave the technical work to web hosting professional while you focus on your own internet business.

There are thousands of web hosting providers on the internet and how do you decide which one you should use? Sites like betahosts.com can help you by comparing all best hosting providers.

The features that web hosting companies are offering are getting quite standard nowadays. There are basic features that you’ll need in a web host. You can find out more here.

To give a web host a competitive edge over others, more attractive features are very necessary. You’ll find that many hosts are willing to give away free stuff that used to cost over $10 per month.

These are some of the advanced features that our top hosts are offering.

Web Buider Many of our top 10 hosts offer powerful web builder program called SiteStudio. SiteStudio allows you to make sites without any html, FTP and HTTP knowledge. You can also build site on the fly while at home, school or even at work. Hostgator’s SiteStudio has over 500 ready-made templates for you to choose from.

Ecommerce Enabled If you are selling products on your site, you need a merchant account. A shopping cart is a useful tool if you have more than 1 product in different categories. SSL(Secured Sockets Layer) is a must-have if you need to receive valuable information such as your customers’ credit card information. PowWeb, Hostgator and Lunarpages provide osCommerce shopping cart and shared SSL for your ecommerce needs.

Marketing Package Most marketing package including search engine submission software, keyword generator and link checker. Some hosting companies like iPower have established partnership with Yahoo! Search (previously known as Overture) and Google Adwords to offer you pay-per-click credit to jump start your business.

Popularity

The best marketing method is by far from word of mouth. If you sign up for a web host and are satisfied with the performance, most likely you’ll recommend to anyone who is looking for a good host. Big web hosting companies know about this concept so well that they would go all out to retain their existing customer. The more satisfied customers they have, the more popularity they’ll get. We take this as an important indicator of how good a host is. # There are a few factors that we judge the popularity of a particular web hosting provider.Number of existing customers. # The satisfaction level of their existing customers: We manage to get hold of their existing customers from the positive reviews they submitted through our host comment form, their comment in the 3rd party web hosting and inhouse forums and the customers’ comment found on other hosting directories. # The amount of pretigious hosting awards they won # Their sites Alexa traffic ranking

Netfirms top the popularity among our top 10 hosts. Network Reliability, Speed and Uptime Guarantee

In terms of reliability, we are looking at how redundant is the server, how often the companies backup the server and how well they handle emergency. “Redundant” means that if any of the Internet connections get interrupted, the alternate Internet connection will take over. PowWeb Load Balancing Technology is one of the best that we found to ensure your site is up 99.9% all the time.

This article will take a beginners look at this interesting subject. It will give you the information that you need to know most.

difficult to connect a web host can be a very scary brief especially when there are so many agreemented currently and all of them suggest one thing or another. thus, it is crucial that before you leap in, you do your own gabouting or seek for selecting the most appropriate web hosting guests for your website.

With the varying trend of technology, web hosts are also varying. Most of them afford numerous military in addition to their important ones. Say if you are operation an e-import website, then of course you need high end defense and a middle through which you can direct your web satisfy efficiently. There are many tools that facilitate this, however if your web hosting service is not reliable then you can lose out on unsmiling revenues and prospective clients.

Once you have determined and identified what web hosting military you involve for your online business, it is then time to join certain web hosting skin and options you must ponder. You can find below some of the most important features of web hosting:

The second half of this article will help you to extend upon what you have learned in the first half.

floppy window and bandwidth

You should know how greatly window your website would need and approximate facts it will engender. When we chat about floppy window, well, its actually the total of storeroom assigned to you by the web hosting affordr. The bandwidth is the total of transfer that is allowable to access and give your website. In casing your website has a lot of graphics then you would involve upper storeroom spot and better bandwidth.

Programming tools and the OS

You need to be steady that your website is uploaded through reliable servers with the hottest working structure. Most web hosts run on a UNIX based working technique, typically Linux or BSD. For the operation of numerous web applications you would involve ASP, .NET, MS SQL, SBS and for these you need a period based host.

Pricing feature

You need to contrast pricing before you decide a web hosting service. Some may afford you better military but at low pricing. Its not forever valid that the best hosting military are forever the most luxurious. Do your seek and then decide.

confirm, defense, Guaranteed uptime and Backups

defense and backups are two very important features that you need to ponder. You should forever decide a web hosting service with reliable call funding. Some also agreement 24/7 funding through home or toll-liberated figures. In casing you are operation an eimport website then defense is one feature that you just cannot discard. Your web hosting service affordr should be such that they can examine clothes about the meter and ensteady no uninvited burglar can chop your site. After all its your website and it is very merit looking into this feature of web hosting.

subject, it is best to use a popular search engine, such as Google or Yahoo.

Web hosting traits demand

This is unvaried the mightily necessary account to build adjustment a innkeeper for your site. You solicitude to resolve the technical requirements for your website, this including:

a) Server suggestion and hardware requirements
If you happening to concur flowering a website that uses programming environments analogous as Active Server Pages (ASP), Visual Basic scripts, Cold Fusion or Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL database, in this case, you consign will to gem a lattice hosting hand that supports Windows proposition such as Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers.

Likewise, if you dash to gravy train programming languages comparable as Perl, CGI, SSI, PHP or mySQL database, hence gob interlacing hosting plans that help Unix/Linux strategy should be operative to hang out your hosting requirements. Once you have these server platform and hardware requirements in mind, you can decide the best web hosting plans for your need. For more information, you can read “How to select a web server and server platform?”

b) Disk turn & Bandwidth desideratum
Here is bounteous technical requisite that you covetousness to rest assured before selecting a interlacing hosting plan, i.e. disk scope and bandwidth. If you intend to impart a website that does not have a platoon of contents (meaning, web pages), then the disk space requirement may not be a big concern to you. In general, a disk space with 200MB to 500MB should be enough to meet your hosting requirement. In contrast, if you plan to host a website with enormous amount of graphic pictures, mp3 or video files, then you should consider a web hosting plan that provide huge disk space, for example, 500 MB to 1,000 MB.

Similarly, the bandwidth exigency bequeath depend on your suburb traffic estimation. Obviously, a website that gather to haul upset traffic leave smash the daily bandwidth premium very fast. If so, you will need to find one web hosting service that offer huge bandwidth with 40 GB to 100 GB per month. Depending upon your website requirement, choosing a web hosting service that provide sufficient amount of disk space and bandwidth is crucial consideration to prevent paying extra costs in the future should you overuse the monthly disk space and bandwidth allowance.

c) Other hosting traits
While the larger requirements are uttermost
important, practiced are poles apart hosting like that you have to presume true too. Can interlacing hosting provider aid video clips on your website, if you have? Is the lattice hosting assistance compatible with Dreamweaver or FrontPage web authoring tool? Do you plan to set up a virtual store online? Can the host support the e-commerce features without adding extra cost to your monthly payments? On top of that, you may also want to find out the number of email accounts provided, number of FTP accounts, web statistic software (analyze your web traffic), type of control panel supported (manage your web hosting account), database and scripting languages supported and etc.

Reliability and scalability

A culminating netting
hosting provider offers undisguised server uptime and flashing Internet connection. You should diagnostic pour in a lacework hosting aid that guarantee at inaugural 99% server uptime with high-speed Internet backbones using at number one OC3 (Optical Carrier) lines (155 Megabits per second) or above instead of T1 or T3 lines. A reliable web hosting provider usually invests heavily on their data center infrastructure with high performance servers, high speed multiple backbones providers with fail-over redundancy, backup power generators and firewall software protection in place to ensure they meet the uptime guarantee specified in the terms of service.

Similarly, you should aggregate a net hosting helping hand with hardware facilities that designed for scalability, thereupon that they can thrive
with your business. For example, if you need to elaborating further disk space, bandwidth or accommodate of mySQL databases, you should be telling to upgrade as needed without any problems.

Customer cooperation and sustain

The never cease basic basis in poll a netting
hosting furtherance is to catch a mesh hosting providers that offers admirable customer backing and support. You should always search for a web hosting provider that offers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week technical support that fielded with highly experience technicians, so that any web hosting problems will be resolved within a reasonable amount of time. You may also want to consider to test how responsive is their customer support by sending few inquiry emails to the web hosting provider. In general, any response in less than 24 hours is considered acceptable. It is a sign of poor customer support if they take more than one day to response.

In addition, a lacework hosting provider with elegant sustain
should and guard confused support channels, such as toll-free phone support, 24/7 email support, convincing chat, online knowledgebase, Interactive form tutorials and FAQ.

Right Platform

The first and most foremost step in choosing a web host is determining the platform the web server should run, usually a choice between Unix/Linux and Windows. Your choice is largely determined by your website and the technologies used to create it, generally a website created with Microsoft technologies (ASP, VB) will run on Windows servers while most other sites using open source technologies (PHP, Perl, Python etc) will run on Linux based systems.

Right Features

Once you’ve chosen your platform the next step is determining the features you’ll need from your web host. Take your time with this step as the feature lists of web hosts are getting longer and longer every day and while some plans may look similar on the surface, a good look at the feature lists may tell another story. Only you can determine the specific features you’ll need, but some key things to keep an eye on are:

Disk Space

Bandwidth

Backups

Uptime

Money Back Guarantee

Domains Allowed

Databases (Number & type)

CGI, PHP, Perl, Python, SSI

Cron

Email accounts

The list goes on and on, just remembers to take your time and make sure your new web host is going to provide you with everything you need.

Budget

Often budget is the only thing people consider when choosing their first web host, funds are usually tight and on the surface most hosts look very similar. Sometimes you get lucky and choose a good host, but more often than not it turns out to be a horror story.

Remember that the cost of your web hosting is more than just the monthly fee, think about the total cost of ownership. TCO includes lost sales due to downtime & slow speeds, downtime rebates, extra bandwidth charges, setup costs, extra feature costs, and your monthly fee.

Many hosts will require you to pay yearly to get the best price available though there are some that allow you to pay by the month and still get the best price, it’s really a matter of personal choice as to what payment method works best for you.

Customer Service

Customer service is another aspect that is often not forgettable while choosing a great web host. You shouldn’t settle for anything less than 24/7/365 service, your website needs to be running all the time so it’s no good if your hosting company doesn’t work during the holidays. Don’t take the web hosting companies word for it, they all claim 24/7 support but few back it up with consistent performance. Be sure to test them out at various times of the day and night via phone, email and live chat if they offer it.

Support

An extensive knowledge base can be a real time saver as well as being an indication of the level of customer service supports and expertise you can expect to receive. Spend some time browsing the support sections of the website and see for yourself the level of support provided.

Longevity

Do a whois on the web host’s domain name and find out the creation date, anything less than a year ago and the risk that they won’t be around next year increases. They could be a great host, but considering more then 95% of new hosts go out of business within a year that really isn’t something you should be taking a chance on.

Uptime

It’s a fact of life that a web host cannot be online 100% of the time, servers need to be rebooted for security and software updates and any web host that doesn’t get updated faces the increased risk of being successfully hacked.

99.9% uptime guarantees are pretty standard in the industry however a guarantee is only as good as how it is defined and the company behind it. Look for no less than a full months free hosting should they not meet their guarantee, a prorated refund based on the amount of downtime is virtually worthless. Say you pay $10 for a month of hosting and your site is down for 24 hours. They will refund you for one day of downtime, which ends up being about 33 cents.

Hence, it’s not a rocket science; just a little research and investigating that can save a lot of heartache in the future and can offer you a great web host.

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Well in most of the cases, the general inclination generally moves towards the Linux web hosting platform and not on the window web hosting, because there are several positive factor that affect Linux and that Linux carries with itself.

While casting our views on Linux hosting we conclude that Linux is more reliable. These are considered to be the best OS for web server. Linux web hosting are typically found to be the most stable and efficient system and as such, it is commonly used for the demanding environment of web and mail server.

Besides, reliability, cost effectiveness is also one of the most favorable factors that make Linux first choice. Generally, the Linux OS comes free of cost or at a very insignificant cost, usually cost of distribution. Also, it has full fledged server, and desk top applications that comes free along with the OS. And, these server applications being free are also very stable.

In addition, Linux web hosting is easy to use and is perfect for your plan. When it comes to web hosting, it is easy to host on Linux web servers. The process of uploading and hosting is almost same for both Linux and Windows web servers. If you want to use a Windows based tool such as Front Page for uploading a web site on to a Linux based web server, make sure that the Front Page extensions are enabled. This is only required if you are uploading using HTTP feature of Front Page on your website. Front Page also makes it possible to upload a web site using FTP. These days, all Linux web servers are coming with installable Front Page extensions, and this should pose no problem for hosting on a Linux platform.

A web site designed for compatibility with a Linux/Unix based web server meets the scalability requirement easily without making any site wide design changes. A web site is dynamic. Usually, a web site starts with a few pages of html and grows over a period of time to suit the customer’s requirements. It is preferable to design a web site keeping these requirements in mind.

Today, Linux based web hosting is most widely used compared to Windows based web hosting. A web site designed to be hosted on a Linux based web server can be hosted on a Windows web server easily but this is not possible with the window web hosting.

Therefore the above mentioned points proves that Linux web hosting maintain a much better position than window web hosting on the server platform.

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The following is a list of the most important 5:

- SSL / SSH /sFTP

SSL allows you to have a secure encrypted tunnel between you and your server. This means that all the input (including login, credit card and any sensible information) doesn’t travel in plain text and it is readable only by you and the server. It works using the Public/Private key paradigm.

If you have a shopping cart, or if you are going to host some membership portal storing personal members information SSL is a must have. Your visitors will appreciate it and will feel more comfortable to pass their data to you.

SSH stands for secure shell. It is used mainly as a secure access to the Unix machine from remote. You will be able to issue commands on the server console as if you were on the server keyboard. As SSL it works creating a secure tunnel.

SFTP is a network protocol that provides file transfer and manipulation functionality over

any reliable data stream. It is typically used with the SSH-2 protocol to provide secure file transfer. With normal FTP access all the files being transferred are sent in plain text

with no encryption at all. Many times you will have to transfer source codes containing hard coded passwords or database information.

- Strong Firewall/IDS

Almost all the networks have firewalls, but not all of them are managed sapiently thus

allowing remote access, information disclosure and active attacks to the hosting

provider network. A secure hosting service should manage redundant firewalls and should give you the capability of adding directly or indirectly (through administration access) to firewall rules. For example, if your website experiences an enormous malicious traffic (brute force http/email password as an example) your hosting administrator should give you the opportunity to add the ip address from which the attack came from to the blocking Firewall ACL’s.

IDS stands for Intrusion detection system. They provide a further level of security because they can recognize a number of attack vector and stop them before they get any success on the target machine.

- Anti-DDoS

DoS stands for Denial of service, it is at the same time the most basic and the most

difficult to prevent attack that can be taken to a network. Such kind of attacks slow down your hosting provider network and all the sites hosted on the same node. This means that if hackers decide to attack a website hosted on your same server (in case of shared hosting), your website will suffer from this attack as well.

Anti-DDos features are now included into routers and firewalls and once again a secure hosting provider should be able to identify and block such attacks.

- Anti Spam

Although Spam is not directly connected with security, it can be a threat to your business. Spam carries viruses, worms and spy ware. Spam can even slow your server down up to shut it down depending on the emails number the mail server can handle. Not to mention the wasted bandwidth. That’s why Anti Spam solution should never be missing not only into secure web hosting packages but in any kind of hosting you’re going after.

- Secure trusted web hosting providers

In my experience as security consultant I have found out that many sites of web hosting services have security holes in their shopping carts, hosting control panels or web application in general. These kind of holes can allow an attacker to gather access to registered users credential including ftp passwords. This is probably the worst thing you may encounter but it really happens.

Protecting from such bad security practices is difficult because no one knows the existence of such security issues beside hackers and security consultants. That’s why it is very important to always review secure web hosting listings made by hackers in order to avoid poor secured web hosting causing you money and data loss.

A web host is a service provider that places your web site on a computer which is connected to the internet. The term for this ‘computer’ is called a server.

A web hosting provider will typically have a fast connection to the Internet and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide web.

With a well-managed web host, you can free yourself from worrying the up-keep of complicated server technology and proper technical maintenance. That’s the whole purpose of the web hosting companies. You should leave the technical work to web hosting professional while you focus on your own internet business.

Let’s begin…

Feature Offered

The features that web hosting companies are offering are getting quite standard nowadays.

The followings are some of the common features you’ll see in most web hosting plans: Control Panel

Control Panel is an interface where you can access your site on the web server, allowing you to set-up and subsequently update and customize your web site. Though cPanel is by far the most popular control panel, some hosting providers customize their own so that they can up-grade and expand it at will. Diskspace

A vast majority of sites that don’t have tons of graphics, sound and video clips or downloadable files easily fit in 50 MB of disk space. You should always leave yourself some room for growth or check if the host has a bigger plan in case you need to upgrade. Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the amount of data transmitted or received through a unit of time. In web hosting, bandwidth is consumed when visitors make requests for files on your web site and download them to their personal computers. Email Account

With POP3 email accounts you can check email from Outlook, Netscape Mail, Eudora or any other Email software. Scripting language

As all our top 10 listings are using Unix and Linux platform, php, perl and CGI are the languages we are talking about here. It is best to choose a host that supports the latest version to maximize the latest web technologies for the fee that you pay. Database

If your web site is going to store a lot of data that should be dynamically accessible (like user accounts, stock prices, maps, Interactive news, message boards and forum etc.), you’ll need to look for an account that offers a database. MySQL is a powerful and most popular database program that runs on the Linux operation system. It is able to handle million of entries all at once. Its flexibility and speed allow you to also store logs and pictures. MySQL is designed to scale well under heavy traffic conditions and is ideal for database-intensive or e-commerce-enabled Web sites. Customer Service/Support

No matter if you are an expert or a novice in web hosting, you need a web host with good customer support system. What is the criteria of an excellent customer support? Let us explain. How big is the knowledge base?

This is particularly important for those who want to search for quick answer without seeking direct assistance from customer support staff. Due to the huge database, normally it’s searchable. Some web hosting providers will even make your life easier by making a video tutorial guiding you step by step in setting up your new account. Very useful for beginner. Responsive customer service staff.

If you are too lazy to find the answer out of a big pool of database, get the direct answer from someone who knows it. Direct customer support comes in a few forms.

a. Email support

b. Phone support: Normally, sales and technical support uses separate phone line. A good phone support staff knows what your problem is and answers with relevance.

c.Web Host like Lunarpages and Globat even have live chat support. However, it’s not how many support channels that are available but how responsive it is of the staff. You can find out the hosting reviews and ratings of each of our Top 10 Cheap Web Host.

Price to Disk Space / Price to Bandwidth Ratio

Are you paying too much for your Web Hosting Plan?

Having done the research on hundreds of web hosting companies, in general, we’ve come to this conclusion: the more disk space and bandwidth you are getting, the more expensive is the monthly price.

To help you understand which price is competitive enough for you to take up the offer, we have categorized 5 different price range. For each price range, a score of maximum of 10 is assigned. To understand the concept behind this, please refer to the details here.

Popularity

A web host might have the best feature offered, unbeatable customer support and reliability in place but without an effective marketing plan, it will go bust too. Let’s face it. If a web hosting provider does not have sufficient members and steady growth of new members, it’s very difficult to survive in this highly competitive industry.

We judge the popularity of a particular web hosting provider by looking at the number of awards won, the reviews of other websites and the Alexa traffic ranking.

All the hosting providers listed on our Top 10 Cheap Web Hosting Directory are among the top 40,000 most visited websites in the world.

Reliability, Speed and Uptime Guarantee

Nothing can hurt you more than this: your visitors come to your web site only to find that it’s not accessible. You lose credibility and possibly even a sale. If your web host does not guarantee at least a 99% uptime, leave the web host now!

To ensure maximum uptime, installation of redundant back-up systems is essential. Each web host has their own management systems to minimize downtime. “Redundant” means that if any of the Internet connections get interrupted, the alternate Internet connection will take over.

We use Alertra software to monitor the uptime of each of our top 10 web hosts.

As for speed, even though routing, web server set up and local area networks play a part in determining the speed of a site, the main concern of how fast your site is depends very much on the types of network connections.

Many hosting providers still connect to the Internet through T1, or T3 connections. This is not the case for our top 10 hosts- they are using OC (Optical Carrier) lines.

A T1 line will offer data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbps (megabits per second), while a T3 line can supply data transfer rates of 43Mbps. OC-1 refers to a circuit that transmits 51.85Mbps. Higher levels are multiples of that speed. Ultra-High Speed OC3 and OC12 lines offers 155Mbps and 622Mbps respectively. Some hosting providers have connections to major internet backbones at the speed of OC48 (2488Mbps) and OC96 (4976Mbps).

First, let’s look at the types of website hosting plans available. The most basic plan is known as shared website hosting. This means that a number of websites are hosted on the same server. However, if your site is extremely resourceful and intensive, you might choose a dedicated website hosting service. This is an expanded form of dedicated hosting in which your website hosting company manages your dedicated server for you.

So how do you go about choosing the ideal website hosting service for yourself where there are thousands of website design companies that offer professional web hosting services? First you have to determine the specific requirements of your website hosting. The first requirement is technical. It covers the server platform and hardware.

The server platform is the operating system the server runs and is either Windows or a Unix OS such as Linux. Each OS has its own set of features. Your choice depends on the type of website you’re planning. If you’re just going to use static web pages, then either is fine. But if you’re looking to incorporate dynamic content such as databases or shopping carts, you need to consider what type of server the scripts run on. For example, if you’re planning on using Microsoft applications such as MS Access, or SQL server, then you’ll need a server running Windows, all these technical issues can be discussed with professional web hosting services, most of these services are also offered by professional web hosting companies in the UK.

Then there are hardware requirements such as disk space and bandwidth. These determine the amount of data you can store on your website and the volume of data you can send and receive. These specifications can vary between different professional web hosting companies in the UK.

Similarly, your bandwidth requirement will depend on your anticipated site traffic. It’s wise to err on the side of caution as a data volume higher than that stipulated in your agreement can attract high surplus charges. An important related consideration is scalability. You should look for website hosting services that allow future seamless upgrading should your requirements grow in the future.

Next, there’s the matter of your actual operating needs. This concerns such matters as how many email accounts and sub domains you require. As a minimum you should go for hosting that offers 20 email addresses and 20 sub-domains. But these numbers can be much higher depending on your requirements. For example, some hosting plans allow unlimited domains. You should also make sure your website hosting services offers a control panel which gives a graphical interface to access configuration and statistics.

Finally there’s the matter of reliability, customer service and support. Your website hosting Service Company should be able to guarantee 99% server up time. And 24-7 technical support is essential.

So how do you go about looking for a website hosting services? First, you have to determine the technical requirements outlined above. Then look for established companies and make a shortlist. Next, check on forums and review sites for reviews and feedback on your short listed professional web hosting services companies. The length of time the firm has been in business is a good indicator of their level of professionalism and stability. Cost is important but it shouldn’t be your main criterion.

There are many professional web hosting companies in the UK for you to choose from. Often website design companies or web design and development companies will offer this service. It’s generally best to entrust website design companies which can provide all your web development needs. This results in efficiency and clear communication as you only have to deal with one website Design Company.

Well in most of the normal situations, the general preference of small business owners for choosing web hosting plan moves towards the Linux server hosting plans rather than window server hosting, because there are numerous optimistic factor that influence people to choose it.

Expenditure Factor

The truth is that Linux hosting plans are much economical than Windows servers plans. For all small business people the web hosting price matters vastly. They wish to receive many options or you can say facilities at a tiny expenditure. Most of them not required supreme type of security and they also do not bother whether it is MS-SQL database server or some thing else to develop their database. Thus Linux server is the best option for them at really least cost with several kinds of features.

Open Source Factor

Linux is an Open Source code and enables people from all around the world to promote their own knowledge for its development. This is one of the main reasons where Linux servers have the power to eject Windows servers far away form competitive hosting industry. Now a day’s, due to its farthest adaptability Linux becomes a unique platform for lots of fresh technologies that are mostly used in competitive hosting industry. This means that a Linux server gives you numerous features than Windows servers can does.

Scripting Language Factor

There are many scripting language available on the Internet like Perl, Python, Java, and PHP to build your site. All these scripting languages and have been developed on Linux / UNIX web servers and they do not required Microsoft support to run them. But when you use those scripting languages which can be run on windows servers like ASP.Net then you require MS-SQL to develop the database and other supports of Microsoft. Now it is easily understandable that for small business owners Linux hosting is best to host their website into the internet.

Dependability Factor

Now a day’s Linux is vastly known as really steady and dependable. This means that Linux servers are little faster, easy to use and reputed as non crushable than a Windows server. Thus, Linux servers will provide more upgraded facilities for your website at a minimum outlay.

Familiarity and Executing Speed Factor

Linux servers have years of experience for providing services than Windows servers in hosting industry. There is no such recommendable difference in executing speed between Linux servers and Windows servers, but it is viewed that Linux servers are slightly quicker in processing normal website pages.

Efficiency Factor

Windows support ASP which is a programming language supported by Microsoft, which allows people to fabricate dynamic database motivated website pages by connecting with a MS-SQL server or Access server. It increase the production cost as well. Linux neither requires ASP language nor MS-SQL databases to build dynamic database driven website pages, because it simply uses MySQL database which is freely available.

Are you the one amongst many wannabe website owners? Why not to get in detail about the plans then?

Let’s start with a small discourse on two types of web hosting services that a majority web hosts come to offer with.

Windows Web hosting and Linux Web hosting – the two types of hosting services

The two hosting services can match to the demands of million individuals and business alike. In Windows web hosting service the hosting platform comprises Active Server Page (ASP) as the base scripting language. While MSSQL is considered for database Windows Server is the Operating System and makes it a major Microsoft technology compliant process.

Linux Web hosting services, on the other hand, is a sum of OpenSource architecture-based options that come complete with technologies specifically designed and dedicated towards non-profit programming and web architecture platform. Linux Web hosting works on a LAMP.

Wondering what’s in a name? Here we go.

L = Linux. The UNIX-like OS.

A = Apache. The HTTP web server.

M = MySQL. The multi-threaded, multi-user, SQL DataBase Management System.

P = PHP/Perl/Python. The three varieties of scripting languages.

Leaving the technology aside (expect to have a detailed discussion in the coming issues) what makes more meaning is in the specialties of the both services.

While Windows Web hosting services guarantee flexibility and robustness (obviously by virtue of its popular language, database and server framework), Linux web hosting services on the contrary, comes with a secure and effective web hosting solution for millions SEMs world-wide.

Now, Windows or Linux, the choice is for you to make. It is you who knows your business best. However, for more information on the subject matter wait for our next issue on the same topic.

Once your web site is ready, your next concern is an appropriate hosting service. With different kinds of hosting available, choosing the right hosting plan for your website may become a little confusing. Shared hosting, dedicated hosting, managed hosting – terms such as these can set your head spinning, particularly if you are new to the world of the Internet.

Shared server hosting runs on a UNIX based server, or any other multi-user operating system. Each website on the Web server is given a unique account in the operating system.

Shared servers are highly recommended for those web owners who do not require very high-performance or bandwidth. Generally, you can get an excellent shared Web hosting service for as little as $5-$10 per month. Today, many excellent Web hosting companies even provide unlimited disk space and bandwidth with their shared hosting plans.

Shared hosting comes with its share of convenient features. Many Web hosts offer powerful control panels that make it easy for users to upload their files, check with statistics, add small functionalities and handle other such small tasks. Shared hosting also provides you with a large number of database management tools. For small businesses, there are provisions for lightweight e-commerce solutions. You are also entitled to a number of free scripts that are parked on your server.

Since there are many websites running on a single server, these servers are maintained by a team of hardcore IT professionals. Due to the tough competition in this field, these professionals make sure that there were servers are in a condition to offer high-performance. This means that you can leave the nitty-gritty of Web hosting to professionals while you concentrate on your business.

Shared Web hosting services are generally for the use of individuals and small businesses. As businesses grow and require more resources and security, shared server hosting may no longer suit them. Shared Web hosting services are slow when compared with dedicated hosting services, though in the case of small to medium websites, the difference in speed is barely felt. Also, if your data requires high security, then you must consider making use of a dedicated server. However, if you are only starting out and your needs are quite limited, then a good shared hosting service will take care of all your web needs.

These days there are so many web hosting services and it’s no doubt a tough task to pick the suitable one for your self. Even if you want to compare different web hosting services, you find your self in a critical situation because you may not be tech savy. In such a situation, you can consult web hosting provider reviews. However before you consult the web hosting provider review, it would be a wise decision to narrow down your choices and know your needs. For example : Ask yourself whether you are interested in low budget hosting services?. Also, find out on your own whether you require a hosting service that supports Linux or Unix.

Once you have identified your needs, you can then start comparing other web hosting service, in order to choose the suitable web hosting plan. You start comparing the services offered by various companies by checking on certain important aspects such as, facilities offered affordability and features that differentiate one company from another are covered. Web hosting reviews also includes information related to the service they offer to clients for technical support and also towards website maintenance. Through web hosting reviews, you also get to know about the important aspects such as security, space, speed, uptime and email services that are provided by various web hosting companies.

There are also quality web hosting reviews which provide additional information such as control panel navigation, software availability, FTP services and access to server logs and errors. Some reviews are specific towards certain group of web hosting companies which are good performers.

One of the ways of finding a web hosting review site is by using the popular search engines like google or yahoo to find a suitable web hosting review site. Once you come across a suitable web hosting review site, you can then start comparing the different packages. Check which type of web hosting plan is suitable to your needs. You can also check and compare the technical hardware specifications which are being offered by various web hosting services. You can then eliminate the hosting services that don’t meet your requirements and by this way you will arrive at a smaller list of web hosting services. Start sending your own queries to these web hosting companies. Some of your questions may not be so important. But you will get an idea about how prompt the hosts are in answering your queries. You can then reject the ones who take a long time to respond. Finally test the connectivity performance of the web hosting company by visiting certain websites which are posted on the servers of companies that have been short listed by you. Also, find out the uptime statistics. This information will help you to give an idea about what type of downtime your website is likely to experience.

Above mentioned are the few web hosting terms which reflects several faces of web hosting. The entire highlighted web hosting plans and terminologies can be categorized in terms of cost, programming languages, operation systems, Web servers, and functionality.

Broad description is given below:

1. Cost:

Web hosting plans are mentioned and divided between affordable web hosting, budget hosting and cheap web hosting. Cost of web hosting is the prime aspect that several small budget site holders are looking for. On displaying the cost of Affordable web hosting, budget hosting or cheap web hosting plan one will come to know that it is less than $5 a month.

2. Programming Languages:

When a user wants to make his/her site dynamic and interactive, he/she should search for hosting plans that support the programming languages that user have command over. Usually applicable languages are PHP, ASP, JSP, PERL etc. Hosting plans assisting such programming languages are called PHP Web hosting, ASP Web hosting, JSP Web hosting or PERL Web hosting.

3. Operating Systems:

After selecting suitable programming language(s), user still has sovereignty to choose the operating system that can host the concern websites. Moreover, as everybody that ASP is restricted to Microsoft Windows, further programming languages, PHP, JSP and PERL; work not only on Windows, but also on UNIX and Linux. Hosting plans assisting particular operating system is termed as Window Hosting, UNIX hosting or rather Linux hosting.

4. Web Servers:

Talking about web servers, Apache is the most widely supported Web server in Web hosting industry. It operates only on Microsoft Internet Information Server or IIS server. For JSP hosting, Web logic or Web sphere is the main requirement. When ever there is any discussion related to Web servers, the main attraction is server performance. There are several solutions available like Managed Web Hosting, Shared Hosting, Dedicated Servers, or Virtual Private Servers (VPS). Out of these shared hosting is the cheapest plan, and one can host as many sites as he/she likes with a Reseller Hosting option. The cost of VPS is just $50 a month, and Dedicated Server plan costs from $50 – $100 or more per month depending upon storage space and bandwidth of the hosting plan.

5. Functionality:

In the market, one can find several hosting plans which either makes the site creation simple or rather offer assistance for the protection of online transactions. Creating a simple website can be a game of certain hours if the hosting plan selected by user supports assorted templates.

Thus on the hope that this article will definitely serve its users we wish best of luck.

Web Host

Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as ‘web server’. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.

The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.

There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:

1. Free Hosts:

The users who are not professional but are making website only as a hobby then for them free hosting can be a good option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the user’s domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.

2. Shared Hosts:

The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility. No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.

3. Dedicated Hosts:

The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to create as many websites as they like. Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.

4. Collocated Hosts:

Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.

5. Reseller Hosts:

In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.

6. Other Hosts:

Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.

Domain Name

Domain name is the name which shows the place where one’s website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is easier than recalling the IP addresses.

Space / Storage

Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very important role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases. Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month can be easily available.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who don’t want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.

Server Type

Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.

Databases

As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.

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Server Side Scripting

Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmaster’s requirements. However PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.

Email

Now the next very important aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can move further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is planning to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts totally depends on the hosting plan one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as big plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.

Control Panel

Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some important functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.

Uptime

Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with excellent features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will think twice before visiting it. In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very important feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.

Price

Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a great variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices ranging from 0 to $1000 per month. For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterwards.