Linux Web Hosting vs. Windows Web Hosting
By David | April 3, 2008
I have one final post regarding web hosting and it’s based on the platform that you choose for setting up your web hosting. There are two basic platforms for web hosting: Windows & Linux. There is another platform or two but these are the two that you will see offered on majority of the web hosting websites that you search.
A common misconception is that you need to setup your website on a Windows server because you’re website is built on a computer that runs Windows. This isn’t true and you would base your server on the type of programming language that you use. The only real reason that you’d need to have a Windows machine would be if your site was using ASP or you needed a SQL database. These are proprietary to Microsoft so you’d need to use a Windows machine but other than that I personally see no reason for using a Windows server.
I manage quite a few websites and I only have one of them on a Windows server and that’s because it’s an online shopping cart based on ASP & SQL. Every other website that I manage is on a Linux machine so you by no means need to choose a Windows hosting plan.
Both of these servers will support your basic HTML files that make up your website. Again, mySQL is generally found on Linux machines and SQL is found on Windows machines but you could actually run mySQL on a Windows machine as well. Both have their security vulnerabilities but many people will argue that Windows servers have more vulnerabilities than Linux servers
The bottom line is that the differences aren’t that big between Windows Web Hosting & Linux Web Hosting so just be sure that you know which programming language that you plan on use such as PHP, ASP, if any. If you’re just starting out and you plan on building a website based on basic HTML, it won’t make a difference at all which you choose. I would simply select a web hosting company that offers the options that you’re looking for and go from there.
That’s all I’m really going to get into in regards to web hosting for now, I’m sure that I’ll revisit web hosting in the future but I just wanted to give you the basics for now. Next I think I’ll get into some of the basics in regards to writing HTML code. Be sure to comment or contact me with any questions that you may have.
I welcome any comments on some other differences that I haven’t included.
Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteSpot.com
Topics: Web Hosting | No Comments »
What To Expect From A Web Hosting Company?
By David | April 2, 2008
I just wanted to leave one more quick post regarding web hosting. These are definitely a few things that you’ll want to look at when searching for a web hosting company.
1. Phone Support - Any major web hosting company is going to offer phone support and I wouldn’t host without it. Imagine your website goes down on a day when you have a press release coming out or some other major event where you expect a surge in website traffic. Now imagine that your website goes down and all you can do is send and email to support. It wouldn’t be a pleasant experience and phone support is a necessity. Don’t even consider a web host unless they have a posted phone number on their website.
2. Uptime Guarantee - Most hosting companies will offer something like “99.9% Uptime Guarantee”. This is something to look for as well, 99.9% is very good and really no one can guarantee 100% uptime. I’m sure some companies will claim 100% uptime but just be sure that they offer something very close to 99% uptime.
3. Monthly Commitments - I don’t really recommend paying for a year or so upfront. If you sign-up with a hosting company and find out that it doesn’t meet your needs you’re really not out anything. Granted, most offer a 30 day money back guarantee but why have to mess with billing or customer support when you can simply pay month to month. Once you’ve had a chance to host your website for a couple months you may consider committing for a year so that you don’t have the month to month billing plus you’ll find that you generally will save money by prepaying for a year but I don’t suggest signing up for a full year right off the bat.
4. Setup Fees - Unless your getting into a dedicated machine or something that requires custom configuration I would never recommend signing up with a web hosting that requires a setup fee. There are too many reputable web hosting companies that don’t charge a setup fee.
5. 30 Day Money Back Guarantee - What is it going to hurt to be able to try out a web host and know that you can get your money back if you’re not satisfied with their service or support. Again, there are too many reputable companies out there that offer 30 day money back guarantees out there to not choose one.
That’s it for this post, I’m going to leave one more post regarding web hosting and we’ll get into design & the rest of the basics.
Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteSpot.com
Topics: Web Hosting | No Comments »
Web Hosting Solutions
By David | April 1, 2008
Web hosting is like renting a storefront but instead of renting a brick & mortar store you are renting space on a web server. Once you’ve created the files that make up your website and pointed your domain names to your web hosting company you will publish the files to your web hosting account which makes it accessible to anyone who types in your domain name. One thing to point out is that your homepage will need to be named index.htm, index.html, default.asp, index.php among a few other options but never name your homepage something like hompage.htm or homepage.html or your site won’t be found properly. With that said, let’s get into some basic information regarding web hosting solutions.
1. Disk Space - This is the amount of space that you’ve ‘rented’. The amount of space that you need really depends on how much content you plan on publishing. The more pages, graphics, images, flash etc that you plan on publishing will require additional space. A decent amount of space for most websites is about 5GB. You’ll find some companies that offer some huge number like 1,000GB of space. Unless you plan on publishing a huge corporate site there really won’t be a need for that amount of space. That’s like buying a 500 horsepower car, yeah it’s nice to say but you’ll never need it.
2. Bandwidth / Data Transfer - This is the amount of data you are allowed to deliver from your site in a given month. Whenever someone visits your website data is transferred from your web hosting account to the monitor of the person visiting your website. This includes text, graphics, images, etc. The size of the images, the number of graphics, etc will determine the amount of data transfer so it’s always a good idea to use images that are lower resolution & limit the number of large size graphics on your website.
3. Email Accounts - This is going to be the number of personal email accounts are allowed to have in your web hosting plan. I would say that 5 email accounts would be a minimum for a new or personal website but these days most companies give you at least 100 so this won’t be an issue.
Email accounts within a hosting plan allow you to setup personal email accounts. For example, say you own TonysToys.com, you could setup sales@tonystoys.com, info@tonystoys.com, tony@tonystoys.com, etc. One last thing on email accounts, often times you’ll find that your email accounts are taken into account when determining disk space. For example, say you have 25mb of space left after you publish your website and you receive an email with a 1mb attachment via your email account, you would then only have 24mb left. Not every hosting company works this way but majority of them do.
4. Domains / Add-On Domains - This is a great option that really made it big with web hosting companies in the last couple of years. Add-On domains allows you to host more than 1 website on a single web hosting plan. This is a great way to save money because you don’t need to purchase a web hosting account for each domain name that you plan on building a website for. Just knowing that majority of my web sites are generally under a few GBs let’s me know that I can setup a few websites on any web hosting account that I setup that offers the capability of hosting multiple domains on 1 account.
That’s it for this post, in my next post I’m going to explain some of the additional features that you can expect with most web hosting plans such as databases, pre-installed software among other features.
Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteSpot.com
Topics: Web Hosting | 1 Comment »
Domain Name Basics
By David | March 31, 2008
Hello
I just wanted to leave a couple more posts regarding domain names before I move into information on web design, web hosting & search engine optimization. There are quite a few things you can do with a domain name once you’ve found a domain that works for you. What you do really depends on what you plan to do with the domain name. I don’t want to make this a boring post so I’ll just list a few domain name basics with a brief explanation.
1. Web Hosting - If you plan on actually putting up a website you’ll need to purchase a web hosting plan. This is the space on a web server that you place the files that make up your website. There are a lot of options in regards to web hosting and I’ll be covering that in an upcoming post.
2. Domain Forwarding - If you have a current website you can just forward a domain name to your current website. This is something that’s very common with real estate agents. For example, a Remax agent gets a Remax provided website address such as http://ww1.remax.com/associates/243443433.asp.
Obviously this isn’t something to put on a business card so they register their full name, if available, as a domain name. They then simply forward TheirNewDomain.com to http://ww1.remax.com/associates/243443433.asp. This makes it much easier for them to give their website address & looks much more professional.
3. Email Accounts - Many times people will register a domain name simply to use for email purposes. Rather than using a free email service such as Yahoo or HotMail, many people would like to have a custom email address. For example, say your name is Bill Smith, rather than using a Yahoo email address such as bill_smith2008@yahoo.com you could search for a domain that represents your name, your interests or just about anything else that you want.
Then assume that you were able to register Smith.com, which you wouldn’t be able to do but for explanation reasons let’s assume it’s available. You would then be able to setup any email address you want such as Bill@Smith.com, Sales@Smith.com, Info@Smith.com, etc. There are a few email addresses that you can’t use such as www@YourDomain.com but other than a few your options are limitless.
4. Domain Parking - If you have a great idea for a website or think that you’ve found a domain name that may be valuable you can simply register the domain name and ‘park’ it. This is simply a page showing that the domain is registered and/or Coming Soon. A few things about park pages is that you can park a domain name with a company such as NameDrive.com which will display ads on your website and if someone were to type in your domain and click on one of those ads you would earn a percentage of the revenue earned on that click.
That’s about it for the domain name basics, there are a few more options but these are the 4 main reasons for registering a domain name. I’m sure that I’ll receive an email saying that I left something off the list but like I mentioned, these are the 4 main reasons for registering a domain name.
Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteSpot.com
Topics: Domain Names | No Comments »
Domain Name Registration Tips
By David | March 28, 2008
Hello again
I figured that I’d leave a quick post with some information regarding domain registrations for those of you that are new to domain name registration and give you a few tips. Below you’ll find some of the more common & important tips for registering a domain name. Rather than going on with details of this post let’s get started. They aren’t listed in any particular order but each of them definitely deserves to be read.
1) Don’t register domain names that are too long. Yes, you can register domain names up to 63 characters long, but that doesn’t mean you should use all 63 characters. You want your domain name to be easy to remember. Not everyone will bookmark your page initially so try to think of something that can be easily remembered — although most premium domains have already be registered for quite some time. I personally try to keep every domain name that I register under 15 characters which is still quite a few but these days it’s tough to get a decent domain with less characters.
2) Use of hyphens in your name. Much like the 63 character domain names option above, you should try to avoid registering a domain name with a hyphen. It’s often times difficult for people to remember but it’s still an option. Now I’m by no means a search engine expert but I’ve found that there is no benefit or penalty for registering a domain name with a hypen. As a matter of fact I own a couple of domain names with a hyphen and they rank rather well so don’t let this be a deterrent. It’s actually quite possible to register some keyword dense domain name with hypens so it’s still an option but one that avoid at all costs if possible.
3) Try to reserve a dot com name. .COM is the most recognized domain extension and if it’s available definitely register it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with registering one of the many other domains but again, people first think of .COM when typing in a domain name. I have a competitor that registered a .NET for a domain names that I own, this was before I registered every extension but the point of the story is that if someone is wanting to visit his site they are most likely going to think of the .COM and end up at my site. They may realize that they are at the wrong place but it’s definitely possible that they will stay at my .COM and make a purchase from me rather than the intended .NET. Just something to think about.
4) Protect your name by registering multiple extensions (.net, .org, etc.). This stops people from copying your name and putting up a competitor site based on the brand that you’ve built. For example, if you own JustBirdCages.com you may want to seriously consider registering JustBirdCages.NET, JustBirdCages.ORG, JustBirdCages.US, etc if they are available. This will keep imitation sites from building their brand on your domain name. Try our domain name search tool to search for some domain names that you’re considering and it will show you all of the available extensions.
5) Keyword Dense Domain Names. If you continue to read my blog I’ll get into keywords in regards to search engine optimization (SEO). Obviously you know some of the more common words that someone would type to find a website related to yours so using a domain name with your keywords in it is definitely a plus. With that said, you’ll find that sites that rank well in the search engines without their domain having anything to do with their website but it definitely doesn’t hurt. I tend to search for the main keywords related to my websites topic before anything else and then research from there for alternatives.
6) Domain Privacy.Recently the option for private registration has become a feasible option. You can find the owner of a website on any registered domain names by doing a WhoIs lookup. The information provided would be your name, address, phone number & email address. Adding domain privacy is like an unlisted phone number with the phone company. There is always an additional cost but these days it is almost becoming necessary. Click here to read more on private domain registration.
That’s about it…
You’re ready to check if your domain is available. You can click here to visit www.WebsiteSpot.com which offers domain names for as little as $1.99 for an entire year.
Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteSpot.com
Topics: Domain Names | 1 Comment »
