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Role of Web Hosting in Search Engine Optimization Process

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:20:14 +0000

So, you have not spared any efforts on your side to make your website SEO friendly and it seems your hard work have done a credible job to help your website gain some tractions when it comes to ranking in major search engines. Google’s obsession with speed is not anything unknown and it has launched a tool to figure out how fast is your website compared to others coded named –Google Online Page speed. However, if you have a love-hate relationship with Google, Y-slow is there to make your task easier. But despite scoring high in tools, the actual loading speed of your website may spell doom. And the culprit is none other than your chosen and trusted web hosting service provider. So, quite expectedly, you need to get your website hosted in different server to save your website from being lost in oblivion. Here we are going to share some tips that can save your skins in innumerable ways:

Reliability: Just tall claims are not going to do any good to your website. You have to be diligent that your website is not going to face occasional outrage, as people are less likely to turn up to your website if the website always remains down. These so-called rare outrages can cost you hugely. Though you may not see any difference in the number of visitors or the sales volumes may not show any sign of fall, your online reputation may be at stake. Take it this way – Google bot came website and found it down. First time, it is ok, second time down, you need to have something to worry and if this continues for the third time in a row, Google will take it as forever-down website and will shot it down from its ranking. Do you want to see this? Definitely not. So all the serious guys out there, you need to make sure that your web hosting company is not repeating this kind of mistake.

Fast, Fast: Are you still in denial about the impact of loading time in SERP? Go to your webmaster account, then go to Labs >> Other. And there you will see Google has publicly declared that site speed is a factor in SERP. From the users’ perspective, it also makes sense to have a website that loads fast. Sometimes, it is web hosting that kills a website’s performance by taking loooooong (sorry for playing with words) time to render elements in web browsers. You need to check the performance of other websites hosted under the same plan of a web hosting company, before proceed with your plan to get your website hosted therein. So, it makes sense that you should go for hosting plans of some big boys like Godaddy, Netfirms, UK2 etc. However, there is no need to put extra pressure on your pocket, innumerable number of discount coupons on web hosting service is available. All you need to find out one good for you. And it will settle everything.

Seo Knowledge Of Your Web Hosting Company: Make it a point that web hosting company has a team of technical support staff who are quite knowledgeable about SEO. Otherwise you will have hard time in making them see reason why you want to edit .htaccess file or why you want to redirect all non-www version of your website to with www version via .htaccess file or why you are so adamant about speeding up your website by adding some codes in .htaccess file.

Author Bio
James Smiths has been writing on different promotional codes for the past 6 years at coupon blogs where you can find UK2 Coupon and Netfirms coupons. He is an active member of a coupon site that has some of the best offers on Godaddy transfer coupon and UK2 Coupon.

Web Hosting For Your Start-Up Venture

admin — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:29:32 +0000

When you’re beginning a start-up or a new small business, you’re probably in for some very hectic weeks and months. You need to hire talent, raise capital, and work to turn your idea into a finished product or service. You also need to market your new business and try to raise publicity on the tight budget afforded to you. It’s a difficult yet exciting time, to be sure, and it probably leaves you little room to consider the nitty-gritty details of setting up a website.

The website, however, provides an important way to cheaply advertise your new business, and finding a web hosting provider is probably a great place to start. If you’re an entrepreneur and looking to pick a web hosting company, there are a few special considerations to keep in mind. Here are a few of them:

Think Small

You are probably best off finding a web hosting company that specifically deals with small businesses. This is because such a company will often cost less while providing you higher levels of individual attention. Targeted web hosting companies also help you avoid many issues that larger firms deal with and upon which you should not have to dwell, such as working with a Digital Realty Trust to secure a data center.

Get Tech Support

A start-up business is highly unlikely to employ an IT team or even a person whose job is dedicated to tech support. Consequently it can be an incredibly difficult, frustrating, and costly experience when something goes wrong with an internet-based company application, the business’ website standing foremost among them. It is therefore important to find a web hosting company that offers convenient, reliable, and free tech support as part of your plan.

Design is Key

A website plays a couple key roles for a new company, even one whose business is not conducted online. It is primarily a crucial advertising tool for spreading awareness and providing informational material about the start-up. At the same time, it is also a way of creating legitimacy and credibility for the business. Anyone who is interested or hears of your new product has a place they can go to see that your venture is a real and viable one. On this note, you can maximize that second key role by working to insure a high degree of professionalism in your site’s content and design. If this is not something you can accomplish on your own, it can be incredibly beneficial to use a hosting service that offers design tools and support for your use.

Hopefully this advice can help entrepreneurs begin to focus on their unique needs in the web hosting marketplace. While certain factors, such as uptime statistics, are important regardless of your business’ size, the start-up and small company is best served to keep its differentiated considerations in mind when looking to establish a website.

Clustered Hosting – The Basics and Benefits

admin — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:56:00 +0000

The number of people accessing the internet is going up all the time and this has made web hosting even more significant than it already was. Many a time it happens that a single server is not able to withstand the entire website’s requirement. In such cases, clustered hosting is a feasible and preferred option. In clustered hosting, various servers play host to common information which enables many users to access the necessary information at the same point of time.

What is Clustered Hosting?

Clustered hosting is term for many servers sharing the programs, processed power etc. This leads to increased redundancy and more efficient utilization of valuable resources. It’s built in a way so as to eliminate the inherent errors of a shared hosting system. Here, all the servers are operated in tandem and share the same work load.

In clustered hosting, the exact service redundancy of websites being hosted optimizes quite well with the server’s consistency. These websites share and consume the server pool’s power. When there is any sort of modification in the client’s account, the information is transferred to all the individual servers in that cluster.

Clustered hosting provides clients with multiple levels of security in addition to good routing, proxy tools, streamlined switching structure, firewalls etc. All these reasons give clustered hosting an edge over the conventional way of web hosting. Additionally, since this kind of hosting is data driven there is no involvement of any manual input whatsoever.

Benefits of Clustered Hosting

There are numerous benefits of clustered hosting compared to the normal one. The most obvious is that with clustered hosting your website will no longer be dependent on one server only. This eliminates any chances of downtimes as sticking with one server will result in your website being offline in case of problems with the server.

Security issues and load balances can be tackled seamlessly by clustered hosting. It spreads the entire hosting load across different servers which eventually reduce the chances of one service undermining the performance of another. So for example, if one website is flooded with a heavy traffic inflow, it won’t drag down the other website’s performance. This type of hosting also allows you to deal with network threats more efficiently and saves the hardware from damage.

Clustered hosting also doesn’t cause you any worries about bandwidth. You can relax easy instead of worrying about your website crashing in case of one visitor too many. Another significant benefit of clustered hosting is regarding the disk storage space. clustered hosting will basically make your website more reliable and increase the scope of things that can be done with it. All in all, clustered hosting should ensure you get no more complaints from visitors about your website being too slow.

Clustered hosting is ideal for large scale operation. It’s not for everyone and those operating on a smaller level will probably won’t need it. For large scale operators, advantages like affordable cost, increased redundancy, higher security and overall higher efficiency are too good to pass over.

Sathish is a blogger from India who loves to write about Technology Innovations. Right now, he works for Nethosting Dedicated Hosting company.

Shared Web Hosting vs. VPS Web Hosting – Which One is Right for You?

admin — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 04:00:05 +0000

Before your website can even launch, you will have to make one very important decision – do you want shared web hosting or VPS web hosting?

What’s the difference?

With shared web hosting, you sign up with a web hosting company and share their server with a bunch of other people. The web hosting company is in charge of maintaining the server, making sure the right updates get installed, and fixing it if something goes wrong. Shared web hosting is the most economical choice, because all of the customers share the cost of maintaining the server. As part of your monthly service, the web hosting company will also provide you with an administrative panel, so that you can check your website’s statistics, or check email addresses on your domain.

While shared web hosting is great for people who do not know how to maintain a server – or simply don’t want to – there are other people out there who want more control over their web hosting. That’s where VPS web hosting comes into play.

VPS stands for virtual private server. With VPS web hosting, one main server is divided into several portions; each portion acts as its own separate server. Under a VPS hosting plan, you are in charge of monitoring and maintaining the server yourself. VPS hosting is a great choice for small and medium-sized businesses who want more control over their technology.

Because you are sharing a server with a few other people, VPS web hosting is cheaper than getting your own individual server; however, VPS hosting can be expensive. In fact, some of the top-tier VPS hosting plans can cost four times as much as shared web hosting plans.

So, is the extra cost worth it?

Many website owners are willing to pay more for VPS hosting because of all the extra control they get. With a VPS web hosting plan, you get more disk space than you would with a shared hosting plan. You also get to choose your own operating system and software.

Plus, VPS hosting is more stable than shared hosting. Since you’re not sharing your server with hundreds (or even thousands!) of other people, you don’t have to worry about other people’s actions affecting your site. VPS plans even come with reserve memory that can kick in during heavy traffic periods, so that your site never slows down.

With web hosting, it all comes down to control. If you want someone to take care of the technical nitty-gritty for you, go with a shared hosting plan. If you want to control your own server, invest in a VPS plan.

Kirsty LaVier is editor for Shopping Cart Reviews, the leading shopping cart software information website.

Should I Go with a VPS Hosting or a Dedicated Hosting?

admin — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 01:52:54 +0000

Choosing the type of web hosting for your websites is highly dependent on the demand of your website. Here are some tips to help you decide whether you should go for a VPS or dedicated hosting.

Typically, website owners start off with shared hosting, as it can help you minimize your website startup costs. Discount Web Hosting often becomes a top priority for one obvious reason: Low hosting costs, but limited server power (as the server is shared among many users.) If your site is visited by less than 1,000 visitors, shared hosting just makes sense.

However, there will be times that your site has overgrown and need more powerful web servers. You will start getting occasional suspension from your shared hosting provider due to excessive CPU usage, no matter how hard you try to minimize memory consumption via webpage caching and such.

Then your next logical question is to move to a hosting plan offering you more power – you next options would be VPS or dedicated hosting.

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting will allow you to share web server resources with other clients, but you will get your own resources “cap” – so there won’t be an issue of other clients taking too much server resources that cause your site to load slow. You can pretty much do a lot of things – install software, set permissions, etc. – that you can’t do with a shared hosting plan – however, be sure to sign up with the Best VPS hosting provider, as there are some restrictions on certain VPS hosting providers you need to be clear about.

Dedicated hosting allows you to lease a web server which resources can only be accessed by your client. You can control everything – installing software, enhancing security, and such – no restrictions, and the Best Dedicated Hosting providers can offer you web servers with superior specs at the same price offered by other dedicated hosting providers – so be sure to shop around.

VPS or Dedicated?

To answer the above, you need to make sure that you sign up with a hosting plan that well-suited your needs. You obviously don’t want to sign up with a dedicated hosting if a VPS hosting can support your website just fine. Dedicated hosting is expensive (in the hundreds of dollar a month) and you should consider it only if your website needed it (after all resource optimization efforts failed…)

I recommend you to go from shared to VPS first, then dedicated hosting – migrating to a better plan is easy these days, as most reputable web hosting providers offer free website migration services.

Website Hosting Promises That Mean Nothing

admin — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:52:17 +0000

Website hosting companies sure like making promises. The typical hosting company offers more guarantees than a politician come election season, but how many of those promises can you take seriously?

The Promise Of Unlimited Everything

Website hosting buyers just love the idea of unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited domains, and unlimited everything else. But—even if we don’t admit it to ourselves—all of us knows that nothing in this world is truly unlimited.

Every website hosting company that offers unlimited services also has fine print in their contract that says something like “for normal usage only.” But what does normal mean?

I got bit by the unlimited bug once back in the dial-up days. I signed up for a cheap unlimited dial-up plan and then kept my computer online all day and night—until they kicked me off and refused to refund my money.

You may think that your website falls under “normal usage”—and it probably does today—but you’re always going to have to worry about any abnormal traffic.

The Myth Of The Free Website Hosting Shared SSL Certificate

Several low-cost website hosting plans come with a free “shared” SSL certificate. That’s supposed to mean that you can run an eCommerce site on your website.

But the shared part of shared SSL means that you’re going to share your secret transaction information with everyone else on your webserver. That can be 10,000 other people at a typical website hosting company. Does that sound secure to you?

Website hosting companies do their best to keep their other customers from accessing your data. But, if something does go wrong, do you want to have to notify your clients that their credit card numbers are in the hands of a hacker because you used a free shared SSL certificate?

99% Uptime, Or 15 Minutes Down Every Day

An offline website makes you look bad. Nobody will come back a second time to your offline website; you’ve lost those readers—and one of them could’ve been great.

So it makes sense that website hosting companies promise uptime guarantees. But before you think that 99% uptime is a great thing, do the math. A measly 1% of each day is almost 15 minutes—that’s a long time for your site to be down; worse, 1% of a year is several days of downtime.

If you care about a reliable site, make sure you go with a website hosting provider that promises better than 99% uptime.

You don’t want to just look at the guarantees website hosting companies make, but also want to see what customers and reviewers say about them. At WordPressWebsiteHost.com, we keep a chart with all the information you need to make a fully informed decision.

Finding a WordPress website hosting company you can trust can be a daunting task, especially if it is your first time at building a website from scratch.

Guest post contributed by Mitz Pantic.

26 Questions to Ask When Choosing a Web Host

admin — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:03:39 +0000

Although web hosting may not cost as much as other business essentials (such as employee salaries, advertising campaigns, etc.) choosing a web host is still a critical decision. Choosing the wrong web host could literally spell doom for your website or online business through down-time, broken features, lack of support, etc. Use this list of questions to help you evaluate web hosting companies and choose the best one for your website.

Tech support
A technical support team that is easily and quickly available 24/7 is a must-have. You will need to be able to contact technical support quickly if your website goes down or encounters other technical issues.

1. How is technical support available? E-mail, chat, phone? For urgent or complex issues, phone or chat support is a huge help.

2. When is technical support available? Look for a web host that offers tech support 24/7.

3. Does tech support cost extra? While most web hosts offer free unlimited technical support, a few do charge extra.

4. How do they handle advanced issues? If an issue cannot be resolved through standard technical support, do they offer advanced technical support from senior technical staff?

Technology support
Websites have different individual requirements—they use a variety of technologies and languages to provide functionality to users. You should be aware of the technical requirements of your website, and ensure that your selected web host offers everything you need.

5. What scripting languages does the host support? Most web hosts support PHP and/or ASP, which are two of the most common scripting languages.

6. What types of databases are supported? Most dynamic websites require one or more databases, usually of a specific type. There are several types of databases that your website might require, including MySQL and MS SQL.

7. How many databases are included? Some web hosts allow unlimited databases, while others limit the number of databases you may create.

8. What control panel is included? The control panel is where you will manage aspects of your website such as e-mails, databases, settings, etc. The most popular control panel is cPanel, although Plesk is also a popular option. If a web hosting company offers a different control panel check to see what features and usability it offers.

9. Will you have root access? While not needed for most small websites, root access is necessary to install or modify certain software on your hosting account.

10. Can you change PHP settings? In some cases, you will need to modify default PHP settings on your hosting account for your website scripts to run properly. This is typically done by editing the php.ini file, although some changes can be made through the .htaccess file. Each web host is different regarding what settings, if any, you are allowed to change.

Storage and bandwidth
Storage, also called disk space, is a measurement of how much data (files and databases) you are allowed to store on your hosting account. Bandwidth is used each time a visitor accesses a file on your website—the more visitors your website has per month, the more bandwidth you will need.

11. How much disk space are you allowed? Most modern web hosting packages offer more than enough disk space for the average small website. However, if your website includes media or other large files, you may find you need additional disk space.

12. How much bandwidth are you allowed? Again, most web hosting packages offer plenty of bandwidth for a small website. Once your traffic levels start to grow, you may need to buy more bandwidth.

Domains
Your domain name and your web hosting work closely together, but will not necessarily be provided by the same company.

13. Does the web host offer domain registration? Most web hosts offer domain registration, either as part of your web hosting package or for an additional fee.

14. Does domain registration cost extra? Some web hosting companies charge extra for domain registration, while others include it in the hosting package cost.

15. How many domains are allowed per account? Many web hosting packages allow you to have multiple domain names on the same hosting account. If you run multiple websites, this allows you to save money by only purchasing one hosting package.

Design
Many webmasters use their own tools, but some users prefer to choose a hosting package that includes a tool for designing and managing the website.

16. Does the hosting package include an easy-to-use website builder? A typical website builder will allow you to add, edit, and delete pages and files. Most include a simple visual editor that allows non-technical users to easily edit the content of webpages.

17. Can the website builder be turned off? If you hire a professional designer to create your website, they will most likely design the website on their own computer and upload it to your web host via FTP. Will your web host allow this? (Most do.)

Emails
There are two different ways you can set up e-mails on your domain (i.e. me@mydomain.com). You can either create a separate email account on your domain, or you can set up a forwarder to forward emails to another email account you own.

18. How many e-mail addresses does your web hosting package include?

19. Does your web hosting package include e-mail accounts, forwarders, or both?

20. Can additional e-mail addresses be purchased, and if so, how much do they cost?

Contract and cost
Most web hosting providers offer simple, easy-to-understand pricing terms, but it’s always worth checking to be sure you fully understand how much you will have to pay and when.

21. Would you be locked into a contract? If so, how long is the contract?

22. Is there a set up or cancellation fee?

23. Are there fees other than the monthly service fee?

Other
Here are a few additional questions you should ask that did not fit into the above categories. These questions are just as important, so don’t skip them.

24. Does the web host offer an uptime guarantee? Practically no web host can truly offer 100% uptime. A good modern web host should provide uptime of 99.9% or greater, though.

25. What do past and current clients think of the web host? Read some online reviews to get a feel for a web host’s customer satisfaction. Keep in mind that no web host can make everybody happy all the time.

26. What is the web host’s reputation and history?

Lin Edwards is the chief writer at SmallBusiness-Domain.com. Visit the Small Business Domain website for Yahoo web hosting info and a 1and1 coupon directory.

Choosing Web Hosting Provider for Your WordPress-powered Site: Myths Debunked

admin — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 14:26:13 +0000

If you want to build a website based on WordPress CMS, you need to decide probably the most important thing in website building: Choosing the Best Web Hosting for your WordPress-powered website.

First things first – let’s debunk some myths in hosting your WordPress-powered website:

Myth #1: Any web hosting settings will do

Facts: Not all web hosting are created the same; each web hosting provider comes with its own plus and minuses. When you are about to establish a WP-powered website, be sure you understand that WordPress is built using PHP programming language and stores information on mySQL database.

Those being said, you need to know that PHP/mySQL works best on Linux hosting. WordPress can actually run on Windows hosting, but there are some limitations that you don’t want to encounter, especially if you are a novice programmer on non-techie guy.

Even better, you need to look for the Best WordPress Hosting provider. Such web hosting provider is similar to other web hosting providers, except the fact that the web hosting provider is WordPress-savvy: Web servers that optimized for WordPress and Support team members who really understand WordPress inside-out.

Myth #2: Using cheap web hosting will do

Fact: Cheap web hosting is, well, cheap for some reasons. Even if the cheap hosting offers unlimited diskspace and bandwidth, you need to understand that the most expensive resource is actually your web hosting provider’s web server CPU.

Cheap means quantity, so expect your cheap web hosting provider to oversell web server spaces that will results in your WordPress-powered site to run slow, even got suspended for excessive CPU usage.

That being said, WordPress installations are resource-hogger, even when they are optimized or cached. WP-powered sites will run well on “regular” shared hosting, but when the hosting provider oversells, you will get yourself into trouble.

Also, please be aware that cheap web hosting usually comes at the expense of reliability. Cheap and reliable won’t really happen in real life, I suppose.

If you want more affordable web hosting, choose the reliable one offering attractive discounts instead of going for cheap – indeed, discount web hosting is way much better than cheap web hosting.

Myth #3: WordPress installation is a real hassle

Fact: No. Did you know that you can do a 1-click WordPress installation when you choose the right web hosting provider? Such capability is being offered by web hosting provider installing instant installation scripts, such as Fantastico De Luxe. All you need to do is just filling some details, and with one click of a button, WordPress will be installed in seconds.

Unfortunately, not all web hosting providers offer such luxury. Be sure to ask the customer service regarding the availability of such feature.

Trusted Web Hosting Review Site can Help You Discover the Right Web Hosting Provider

admin — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 01:53:16 +0000

When looking for the best web host or word press application, the person is going to find that there are numerous pieces of information that is available all over the Internet. This is making it hard for some people to decide just who should they trust. At HostUCan people can find the web hosting review and wordpress hosting information that they need in order to make a decision on which is best for them. The person is going to be able to use non-biased reviews that are based on facts alone to make their decision. It is going to make the time that they spend searching almost cut in half because the site is going to have everything that the person is going to need.

The company predicts their ratings based on the number of years that the web host has been in service, the number of options that are offered, the price, customer service that is offered, the reviews that can be found from real consumers of the web host, and the reliability of the web host. This is the criteria that most people should be checking gin the first place, and the HostUCan website puts it all out there for the person to find easily and not have to spend hours finding all this information on their own.

The great thing about this review site is the person simply types in what they are looking for in wordpress hosting. For example, how you want to build the site that you have in mind and the amount of visitors per day that you expect to have, which will tell the company just what kind of reliability and space that you are going to need for your website. With this information in place, the site is going to give the person the information that they need on the top few web hosts that made the final cut.

At HostUCan people that are looking to start a website are not the only ones that are going to find this site useful. Those who already have a web host will find that this is a great area to come and vent their frustrations with other about their web host, share ideas on troubleshooting problems with the web host, and basically be the one thing that could help or change someone’s mind in response to the web host that they are considering using. Overall, HostUCan is the place to go for the best web hosting review that is out there and a great way to make the final decision on which that you should go with.

2010 HostGator Cyber Monday Coupon Code – 50 Percent Off

admin — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 16:23:27 +0000

HostGator is going all-out in 2010 Cyber Monday promotion. Valid for one day only, HostGator offers 50% discounts on ALL HostGator hosting services.

This HostGator Cyber Monday promo can get you HostGator’s reliable hosting at real bargain price tags:

Shared Hosting: ONLY $2.48/month
Reseller Hosting: ONLY $12.48/month
VPS Hosting: ONLY $9.98/month (first month)
Dedicated Servers: ONLY $87/month (first month)

Again, this Cyber Monday promo is applicable to all HostGator hosting services – something that HostGator has never done before.

Please use this coupon code to claim the 50% OFF promo: CYBERMONDAY2010

To redeem the coupon code, just visit HostGator official site to sign up for any HostGator hosting services you need, and the system will automatically applies the 50% OFF coupon code for you.

Please note, the HostGator Cyber Monday 2010 promotion will run for 12 hours only on Monday November 29, 2010 from 12:00AM – 11:59PM CST (-6 GMT)