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Budget Web Hosting Content Provided by iPage iPage Web Hosting
A common question that arises among webmasters and small businesses with a web presence is: ”My website and traffic are growing, how do I know when it is time to move up to a bigger hosting account?”. In order to answer this question there are several factors that need to be carefully considered. Presuming that the average small business launches their website on a smaller, shared web hosting account, here are a few points to consider when contemplating the move to a larger (potentially more expensive) hosting account.
Size - The sheer size of a website often determines the most appropriate web hosting plan that will suffice for proper operation. Besides the obvious specifications listed by the hosting provider, there are two main measures of website size which relate to the hosting account – disk space and bandwidth.
Disk Space – This term refers (literally) to how much hard drive disk space is required to house your website. A very general formula for disk space required by your site is the following formula: (number of pages in your site) x (average page size) = minimum disk space required. A very broad rule of thumb is to consider the html component of your pages (if well written and clean these should be less than 30kb) and then add in any CSS (cascading style sheets) or JavaScript files and then add on any embedded images. Using very broad strokes, a ”typical” flat html web page will then be somewhere around 100kb. Ergo, a site with 50 pages would require: (50 pages x 100kb) = 5MB. Similarly, a site with 100 pages requires 10MB. A website with 1,000 pages would require 100MB disk space at a minimum.
Remember an important caveat – any video files or extremely large graphics can increase these numbers by 100 times. So the type of content you display on your website will dramatically impact the disk space required.
Bandwidth – A second measure of website size is the amount of bandwidth (sometime referred to as ‘transfer rate’ or simply ‘transfer’) required. This is usually a reflection of the number of visitors your website is serving – and also the size of the files being delivered by your site. The more visitors you have to your website – the more bandwidth required to serve them. As noted above, streaming files, large video or music downloads are also bandwidth intensive. While there is no really easy formula to calculate bandwidth requirements, your current web hosting provider should be keeping a record of how much bandwidth your website consumes each month. Alternatively there are online tools to let you calculate bandwidth usage.
Clearly if your website is growing fast in terms of disk space and/or bandwidth you should consider your options for a larger web hosting account type.
Security – In order to make your website hosting affordable on the lower end of the spectrum, hosting providers will place multiple websites together on one web server. This practice is referred to as ‘’shared hosting”. Literally, you are sharing the server with other websites. The benefits of this arrangement are the lower costs – since the server costs are also shared between many websites. The vast majority of beginning websites are hosted on shared servers. For many purposes this hosting configuration is quite adequate. There are reasons, however, that one may choose to migrate their website services to a server with lower contention rates (that means fewer websites per server).
The most pressing of these triggers to migrate is security. While the vast majority of web hosting providers are hyper-vigilant regarding site security, a shared environment poses an additional loophole for problems to occur. Due to the fact that there may be over 100 websites on the server, each with its own user name and password, that means there are 100 opportunities for a weak user name / password combination. Believe it or not, every hosting provider has customers who use ‘password’ as their password. Not smart. What this means for your website, if you are on a shared server, is that the security of your server (and therefore your website) is only as strong as the weakest user name / password combination of all the shared accounts. Further, while not as common, there are unscrupulous characters out there that will purchase a shared hosting account for spamming or other malicious activity. If such a user is on your server then your website is at risk. A further drawback of this situation may be getting ”blacklisted” (blocked) by large ISP’s. The end result is often that emails are not sent and received properly. The best way to protect your website from undue influence by others on a shared server is to move to a server with fewer (or no other) websites on it.
Reliability – Reliability (also referred to as ”uptime”) is a key consideration in migrating upward in the web hosting hierarchy. At its most basic reliability boils down to this: Does your website ever fail to load when called for in a browser? You are paying your good money to a hosting provider to ensure that your website is always available. Every reputable web hosting company will have multiple connections to the Internet, a solid data center with lots of backup power and uninterruptible power supplies, and physical security to prevent downtime. These elaborate precautions are for naught if one of the websites on a shared server goes haywire. The most common cause of server downtime on a shared server is simple human error caused by webmasters on a shared server creating a script which is malformed and then proceeds to absorb all the resources of that server (usually RAM). The only way to completely eliminate this potential issue is to house your website on a server that is dedicated to only your site (virtual or dedicated server). If you are wondering exactly how reliable your web hosting is, there are many monitoring tools available to measure uptime. One popular free tool is Alertra. Simply type your website URL into the box in the upper right and you can see if your website is currently up. For a modest monthly fee you can have Alertra check your website every few minutes to determine reliability.
Remember to consider the growth of your databases and files when considering moving up to a new hosting account. Also, if you are on a shared web server and everything is working well with great uptime and good security, then you may want to stay where you are until you hit the next level of growth. When you do get ready to move up to a higher level web hosting account, be sure to work with your hosting provider to get tips on migrating your files and transitioning smoothly.
Source: Budget Web Hosting – Does Your Site Fit Into a Shared Host?
Budget Web Hosting Content Provided by iPage iPage Web Hosting
A common question that arises among webmasters and small businesses with a web presence is: ”My website and traffic are growing, how do I know when it is time to move up to a bigger hosting account?”. In order to answer this question there are several factors that need to be carefully considered. Presuming that the average small business launches their website on a smaller, shared web hosting account, here are a few points to consider when contemplating the move to a larger (potentially more expensive) hosting account.
Size - The sheer size of a website often determines the most appropriate web hosting plan that will suffice for proper operation. Besides the obvious specifications listed by the hosting provider, there are two main measures of website size which relate to the hosting account – disk space and bandwidth.
Disk Space – This term refers (literally) to how much hard drive disk space is required to house your website. A very general formula for disk space required by your site is the following formula: (number of pages in your site) x (average page size) = minimum disk space required. A very broad rule of thumb is to consider the html component of your pages (if well written and clean these should be less than 30kb) and then add in any CSS (cascading style sheets) or JavaScript files and then add on any embedded images. Using very broad strokes, a ”typical” flat html web page will then be somewhere around 100kb. Ergo, a site with 50 pages would require: (50 pages x 100kb) = 5MB. Similarly, a site with 100 pages requires 10MB. A website with 1,000 pages would require 100MB disk space at a minimum.
Remember an important caveat – any video files or extremely large graphics can increase these numbers by 100 times. So the type of content you display on your website will dramatically impact the disk space required.
Bandwidth – A second measure of website size is the amount of bandwidth (sometime referred to as ‘transfer rate’ or simply ‘transfer’) required. This is usually a reflection of the number of visitors your website is serving – and also the size of the files being delivered by your site. The more visitors you have to your website – the more bandwidth required to serve them. As noted above, streaming files, large video or music downloads are also bandwidth intensive. While there is no really easy formula to calculate bandwidth requirements, your current web hosting provider should be keeping a record of how much bandwidth your website consumes each month. Alternatively there are online tools to let you calculate bandwidth usage.
Clearly if your website is growing fast in terms of disk space and/or bandwidth you should consider your options for a larger web hosting account type.
Security – In order to make your website hosting affordable on the lower end of the spectrum, hosting providers will place multiple websites together on one web server. This practice is referred to as ‘’shared hosting”. Literally, you are sharing the server with other websites. The benefits of this arrangement are the lower costs – since the server costs are also shared between many websites. The vast majority of beginning websites are hosted on shared servers. For many purposes this hosting configuration is quite adequate. There are reasons, however, that one may choose to migrate their website services to a server with lower contention rates (that means fewer websites per server).
The most pressing of these triggers to migrate is security. While the vast majority of web hosting providers are hyper-vigilant regarding site security, a shared environment poses an additional loophole for problems to occur. Due to the fact that there may be over 100 websites on the server, each with its own user name and password, that means there are 100 opportunities for a weak user name / password combination. Believe it or not, every hosting provider has customers who use ‘password’ as their password. Not smart. What this means for your website, if you are on a shared server, is that the security of your server (and therefore your website) is only as strong as the weakest user name / password combination of all the shared accounts. Further, while not as common, there are unscrupulous characters out there that will purchase a shared hosting account for spamming or other malicious activity. If such a user is on your server then your website is at risk. A further drawback of this situation may be getting ”blacklisted” (blocked) by large ISP’s. The end result is often that emails are not sent and received properly. The best way to protect your website from undue influence by others on a shared server is to move to a server with fewer (or no other) websites on it.
Reliability – Reliability (also referred to as ”uptime”) is a key consideration in migrating upward in the web hosting hierarchy. At its most basic reliability boils down to this: Does your website ever fail to load when called for in a browser? You are paying your good money to a hosting provider to ensure that your website is always available. Every reputable web hosting company will have multiple connections to the Internet, a solid data center with lots of backup power and uninterruptible power supplies, and physical security to prevent downtime. These elaborate precautions are for naught if one of the websites on a shared server goes haywire. The most common cause of server downtime on a shared server is simple human error caused by webmasters on a shared server creating a script which is malformed and then proceeds to absorb all the resources of that server (usually RAM). The only way to completely eliminate this potential issue is to house your website on a server that is dedicated to only your site (virtual or dedicated server). If you are wondering exactly how reliable your web hosting is, there are many monitoring tools available to measure uptime. One popular free tool is Alertra. Simply type your website URL into the box in the upper right and you can see if your website is currently up. For a modest monthly fee you can have Alertra check your website every few minutes to determine reliability.
Remember to consider the growth of your databases and files when considering moving up to a new hosting account. Also, if you are on a shared web server and everything is working well with great uptime and good security, then you may want to stay where you are until you hit the next level of growth. When you do get ready to move up to a higher level web hosting account, be sure to work with your hosting provider to get tips on migrating your files and transitioning smoothly.
Cheap web hosting is often frowned upon by more experience webmasters, however it is a beacon of hope for aspiring web site owners on a very limited budget. Cheap web hosting gives the average person a gateway into the web hosting community by giving them the ability to host their web site for only a few dollars a month. However, it is debatable as to which kind of cheap web hosting is the best.
VPS web hosting is very different from shared hosting because it comes in a wide range of plans, all of which are priced very differently, with the cheapest plans starting at about $10 per month and the most expensive costing about $200 or more per month. The cheapest shared hosting plan on the other hand only costs about $3 per month, with the most expensive type costing about $50 per month. The following information will attempt to draw an accurate comparison of the two hosting types in their cheapest forms.
Fees and Startup Costs
Since budgeting is of obvious importance when shopping for cheap web hosting plans, it is best to compare the fees and startup costs associated with each type of hosting plan first. The fees associated with VPS hosting plans will differ greatly depending upon the hosting company, however most hosting providers do charge a setup fee when the plan is first purchased. Even so, most cheap VPS plans do not require you to pay more than one month upfront, which greatly diminishes the total setup costs. Cheap shared hosting plans usually do not have nay setup fees, however many of them require you to pay at least a year upfront, which makes the startup costs equal to or greater than that of a cheap VPS hosting plan.
Features and Limitations
Even though novice webmasters do not need a very comprehensive hosting plan, it is still beneficial to have access to the best possible hosting plan for your money. Shared web hosting plans are known for having strict limitations that cannot be bypassed without upgrading your plan to a more expensive solution. However, VPS hosting is slightly more expandable because it is possible to instantly draw resources from another part of the server and allocate them to your site during unexpected traffic surges. If you are expecting traffic surges then you may want to consider a VPS hosting plan, as they are better at accommodating sudden server loads, and they are easier to upgrade.
Support and Reliability
As in every other industry, you will undoubtedly get what you pay for. As such, cheap web shooting plans of all types are notorious for being unreliable and inconsistent. However, the reliability and support of a hosting plan will usually depend primarily on the hosting provider. Nonetheless, VPS hosting is consistently more reliable than shared hosting based on the server environment and how it is configured. Ideally, a new webmaster on a budget should look for a cheap VPS hosting plan from a reliable hosting provider with no startup fees and a flexible billing schedule.
Budget Web Hosting Content Provided by iPage iPage Web Hosting
No matter what the type of platform you are running – speed matters if you want to compete. This is true even if you are running from an established content management system (CMS) such as WordPress. While the underlying CMS may be practically identical between various WordPress websites, there are a variety of factors that can substantially influence performance and speed.
Anyone who has ever waited for a website to load for more than a second or two can tell you about the benefits of a fast loading website. Here is another reason why speed is important – Google earlier this year specifically called out website speed as a critical factor in its search engine rankings on the Official Google blog. Here’s just a bit of what Google had to say on the subject: ”Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed – that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We encourage you to start looking at your site’s speed – not only to improve your ranking in search engines, but also to improve everyone’s experience on the Internet.”
So just what kind of difference does your site speed have on your Google rankings or the number of visitors to your site? One analytics company recently conducted research specifically to see what impact site speed actually had on Google search rankings. The results? A faster website load time triggered the Googlebot to visit the site much more often. This corresponded to a 15 percent increase in website traffic over the same period. You can view the complete Google website speed analytics study results here.
You know that speed is important for your website, so what sorts of items can you address with your WordPress site to gain superior speed and get the edge on your search rankings? Here is a great list of items you should check into.
1. Upgrade to the latest version of WordPress -According to the WordPress download page, the latest stable version is WordPress Version 3.0.1. If you are already running the current version – then you’re good. If not, your web hosting company can advise you on the best way to upgrade. It is often the case that a hosting provider will either offer a ‘one-click’ install or upgrade – or will simply perform the upgrade for you upon request.
2. Investigate exactly what your current website speed is. There are a variety of ways to view how fast your WordPress website loads up. Here is one that is easy to use and free.
Alertra – Simply type your URL into the ‘Check URL’ box in the upper right hand corner of the Alertra website. Then press the ‘check’ button. Alertra then loads your website from a number of different worldwide locations. A recent test included checks from Frankfurt, London, Joplin, Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, Orlando, Atlanta, Chicago, Shanghai and Sydney. The results also include a parameter marked ‘time’ which returns the load time of your website page down to hundredths of a second.
3. Streamline your code – There are a number of relatively easy and obvious ideas to reduce the size of the pages that your site needs to load. You can get started by reading up on Google’s own advice on making your website adhere to what they term ”Web Performance Best Practices”. This means your site will generally be groomed to best display quickly and in the manner that Google requires. Read the description and explore further links at the Web Performance Best Practices page.
4. Ensure that your web hosting company is a top performer. A critical component in the speed of your WordPress website is the performance of your web hosting provider. To ensure that you are using a truly world-class hosting provider you should perform a few checks.
Twitter – It is very easy to see what others think of any web hosting company by checking their comments on Twitter. Just navigate to twitter.com and search by company name.
Industry expert sources – Another great reality check on any reputable hosting provider is to search the industry expert websites. You can see expert opinions on The Hosting News and webhostingtalk.com. Both sites will give you insight into which providers are industry leaders and which aren’t.
Don’t forget to email in to your hosting provider and ask questions like: How do you ensure site speed for your clients? What type of server will I be on? (Look for quality hardware vendors and redundant connectivity) Can you help me make my website faster? Their willingness to answer and the completeness of the responses will speak volumes about how they view accommodating the speedy function of your WordPress site.
Finally, if you simply have a massive site or need to keep complex features in place, consider moving your website to a higher end service – like a virtual server or a dedicated server. While these web hosting products may cost more on a monthly basis, you often find that the increased speed and stability of the server justifies additional outlay.
Source: WordPress Server Optimization – Blog Web Hosting
Budget Web Hosting Content Provided by iPage iPage Web Hosting
No matter what the type of platform you are running – speed matters if you want to compete. This is true even if you are running from an established content management system (CMS) such as WordPress. While the underlying CMS may be practically identical between various WordPress websites, there are a variety of factors that can substantially influence performance and speed.
Anyone who has ever waited for a website to load for more than a second or two can tell you about the benefits of a fast loading website. Here is another reason why speed is important – Google earlier this year specifically called out website speed as a critical factor in its search engine rankings on the Official Google blog. Here’s just a bit of what Google had to say on the subject: ”Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed – that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We encourage you to start looking at your site’s speed – not only to improve your ranking in search engines, but also to improve everyone’s experience on the Internet.”
So just what kind of difference does your site speed have on your Google rankings or the number of visitors to your site? One analytics company recently conducted research specifically to see what impact site speed actually had on Google search rankings. The results? A faster website load time triggered the Googlebot to visit the site much more often. This corresponded to a 15 percent increase in website traffic over the same period. You can view the complete Google website speed analytics study results here.
You know that speed is important for your website, so what sorts of items can you address with your WordPress site to gain superior speed and get the edge on your search rankings? Here is a great list of items you should check into.
1. Upgrade to the latest version of WordPress -According to the WordPress download page, the latest stable version is WordPress Version 3.0.1. If you are already running the current version – then you’re good. If not, your web hosting company can advise you on the best way to upgrade. It is often the case that a hosting provider will either offer a ‘one-click’ install or upgrade – or will simply perform the upgrade for you upon request.
2. Investigate exactly what your current website speed is. There are a variety of ways to view how fast your WordPress website loads up. Here is one that is easy to use and free.
Alertra – Simply type your URL into the ‘Check URL’ box in the upper right hand corner of the Alertra website. Then press the ‘check’ button. Alertra then loads your website from a number of different worldwide locations. A recent test included checks from Frankfurt, London, Joplin, Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, Orlando, Atlanta, Chicago, Shanghai and Sydney. The results also include a parameter marked ‘time’ which returns the load time of your website page down to hundredths of a second.
3. Streamline your code – There are a number of relatively easy and obvious ideas to reduce the size of the pages that your site needs to load. You can get started by reading up on Google’s own advice on making your website adhere to what they term ”Web Performance Best Practices”. This means your site will generally be groomed to best display quickly and in the manner that Google requires. Read the description and explore further links at the Web Performance Best Practices page.
4. Ensure that your web hosting company is a top performer. A critical component in the speed of your WordPress website is the performance of your web hosting provider. To ensure that you are using a truly world-class hosting provider you should perform a few checks.
Twitter – It is very easy to see what others think of any web hosting company by checking their comments on Twitter. Just navigate to twitter.com and search by company name.
Industry expert sources – Another great reality check on any reputable hosting provider is to search the industry expert websites. You can see expert opinions on The Hosting News and webhostingtalk.com. Both sites will give you insight into which providers are industry leaders and which aren’t.
Don’t forget to email in to your hosting provider and ask questions like: How do you ensure site speed for your clients? What type of server will I be on? (Look for quality hardware vendors and redundant connectivity) Can you help me make my website faster? Their willingness to answer and the completeness of the responses will speak volumes about how they view accommodating the speedy function of your WordPress site.
Finally, if you simply have a massive site or need to keep complex features in place, consider moving your website to a higher end service – like a virtual server or a dedicated server. While these web hosting products may cost more on a monthly basis, you often find that the increased speed and stability of the server justifies additional outlay.
Budget Web Hosting Content Provided by iPage iPage Web Hosting
No matter what the type of platform you are running – speed matters if you want to compete. This is true even if you are running from an established content management system (CMS) such as WordPress. While the underlying CMS may be practically identical between various WordPress websites, there are a variety of factors that can substantially influence performance and speed.
Anyone who has ever waited for a website to load for more than a second or two can tell you about the benefits of a fast loading website. Here is another reason why speed is important – Google earlier this year specifically called out website speed as a critical factor in its search engine rankings on the Official Google blog. Here’s just a bit of what Google had to say on the subject: ”Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed – that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We encourage you to start looking at your site’s speed – not only to improve your ranking in search engines, but also to improve everyone’s experience on the Internet.”
So just what kind of difference does your site speed have on your Google rankings or the number of visitors to your site? One analytics company recently conducted research specifically to see what impact site speed actually had on Google search rankings. The results? A faster website load time triggered the Googlebot to visit the site much more often. This corresponded to a 15 percent increase in website traffic over the same period. You can view the complete Google website speed analytics study results here.
You know that speed is important for your website, so what sorts of items can you address with your WordPress site to gain superior speed and get the edge on your search rankings? Here is a great list of items you should check into.
1. Upgrade to the latest version of WordPress -According to the WordPress download page, the latest stable version is WordPress Version 3.0.1. If you are already running the current version – then you’re good. If not, your web hosting company can advise you on the best way to upgrade. It is often the case that a hosting provider will either offer a ‘one-click’ install or upgrade – or will simply perform the upgrade for you upon request.
2. Investigate exactly what your current website speed is. There are a variety of ways to view how fast your WordPress website loads up. Here is one that is easy to use and free.
Alertra – Simply type your URL into the ‘Check URL’ box in the upper right hand corner of the Alertra website. Then press the ‘check’ button. Alertra then loads your website from a number of different worldwide locations. A recent test included checks from Frankfurt, London, Joplin, Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, Orlando, Atlanta, Chicago, Shanghai and Sydney. The results also include a parameter marked ‘time’ which returns the load time of your website page down to hundredths of a second.
3. Streamline your code – There are a number of relatively easy and obvious ideas to reduce the size of the pages that your site needs to load. You can get started by reading up on Google’s own advice on making your website adhere to what they term ”Web Performance Best Practices”. This means your site will generally be groomed to best display quickly and in the manner that Google requires. Read the description and explore further links at the Web Performance Best Practices page.
4. Ensure that your web hosting company is a top performer. A critical component in the speed of your WordPress website is the performance of your web hosting provider. To ensure that you are using a truly world-class hosting provider you should perform a few checks.
Twitter – It is very easy to see what others think of any web hosting company by checking their comments on Twitter. Just navigate to twitter.com and search by company name.
Industry expert sources – Another great reality check on any reputable hosting provider is to search the industry expert websites. You can see expert opinions on The Hosting News and webhostingtalk.com. Both sites will give you insight into which providers are industry leaders and which aren’t.
Don’t forget to email in to your hosting provider and ask questions like: How do you ensure site speed for your clients? What type of server will I be on? (Look for quality hardware vendors and redundant connectivity) Can you help me make my website faster? Their willingness to answer and the completeness of the responses will speak volumes about how they view accommodating the speedy function of your WordPress site.
Finally, if you simply have a massive site or need to keep complex features in place, consider moving your website to a higher end service – like a virtual server or a dedicated server. While these web hosting products may cost more on a monthly basis, you often find that the increased speed and stability of the server justifies additional outlay.
Budget Web Hosting Content Provided by iPage iPage Web Hosting
Budget Web Hosting – What to Look For
Design and development professionals who are looking to reduce costs in these transitional economic times have increasingly turned to budget web hosting products to help them lower monthly costs and increase profits. So how do professionals assess and purchase discount hosting products? Here are a few thoughts.
The Budget Web Hosting Landscape
When considering budget web hosting products, a buyer will generally break these products into one of several basic categories according to account type. Below are listed the traditional account breakdowns with a brief description of each.
Ad Supported or Free Hosting
This category of hosting is generally for non-business use and consists of those accounts that offer an extremely limited amount of disk space and bandwidth in exchange for displaying 3rd party advertising such as banner ads or Google AdWords. In addition to being limited in size and scope, these types of accounts can also be subject to frequent slowdowns or outages as the transitory nature of the customer base attracts potentially unsavory co-tenants on your shared server.
Discounted Shared Hosting
A cut above free hosting accounts are deeply discounted shared accounts which typically charge just a few dollars or less per month. The fact that discounted shared hosting accounts require payment strongly discourages the same types of abuses that can occur with free web hosting accounts – a definite plus. One potential pitfall is the fact that to keep the operating costs as low as possible, deeply discounted shared hosting operators may attempt to stuff as many accounts as possible onto a single server as possible. This is where getting a current customer referral or conducting proper market research becomes critical to your success.
ASP.NET Hosting
For those customers needing use Microsoft’s .NET platform, an ASP.NET hosting provider is a must. This account is pre-configured on an ASP.NET server which the hosting provider maintains. This maintenance activity includes not only the usual monitoring of server performance and uptime, but also installing the sometimes frequently needed patches from Microsoft to address software updates. An additional bit of credibility is the Microsoft Gold Certified credentials coupled with Microsoft certified engineers.
Virtual Servers or VPS Hosting
A bridge between shared server hosting accounts and dedicated servers is a virtual server – also known as VPS hosting (that’s an acronym for Virtual Private Server hosting). Virtual servers have dramatically increased in popularity along with the growth of better virtualization software. This is software that emulates a dedicated server by using a fraction of the server’s total resources to execute programs like a complete and stand-alone dedicated server. There are various virtualization platforms, but generally speaking you can get a virtual server in either a Linux OS or a .NET OS powered by Microsoft’s hypervisor. The advent of less expensive hardware and software for virtualization has created a discount virtualization hosting product that is quite viable.
Cloud Computing or Cloud Hosting
As there are often contradictory descriptions of exactly what constitutes ”cloud computing” we present the Wikipedia definition here. ”Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid. Cloud computing is a paradigm shift following the shift from mainframe to client–server in the early 1980s. Details are abstracted from the users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources. It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet. This frequently takes the form of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through a web browser as if it were a program installed locally on their own computer.”
Dedicated Servers
While one may not think of dedicated servers falling under the auspices of ”budget hosting” – there are a number of discounted dedicated server hosting products which bear mentioning here. A dedicated server is a server whose use is restricted to just one customer or website. This means that the resources are allocated directly by the owner to their own sites. A key feature of dedicated servers (and also virtual servers) is root level access. Root level access is a special user account used for system administration. A key consideration in discounted dedicated servers is whether the server is considered ”managed” or ”unmanaged”. A managed server generally means that the hosting provider will look after any problems with the server, the connectivity to the network, any software patches that are required, or correcting any malicious activity that may occur on the server. An unmanaged server places the responsibility for the aforementioned items on the server administrator designated by the buyer (dedicated server hosting customer).
Things to Consider When Purchasing Budget Hosting
Value versus Price – With any of the budget hosting products listed above the cheapest price doesn’t necessarily mean the best deal. That is because one needs to look carefully at the brand, the account specifications, the guarantees, and the service component of the offering. Therefore, the lowest cost product may simply be the most stripped down product or the product that offers the lowest level of service. What you really want is the best value for the money. That means selecting a budget hosting plan that combines the lowest price with the highest service component and specifications.
Security – As mentioned previously, in an effort to wring the most cost out of the hosting and to generate sufficient profits it is possible that a deeply discounted shared hosting offering will attract unsavory neighbors on your shared server. At the very least you should ask questions about how secure the server is, and what provisions are made for backing up your valuable website data.
Reputation – One of the best ways to get a great budget hosting deal is to stick with a known quantity in the hosting business: a company with a good brand. You don’t have to look hard to find a reputable hosting provider. There are many out there and they can be identified by the way that current customers refer to them online. They use accolades like ”great” and ”fantastic”. You can also always check out great hosting resource sites like The Hosting News and Web Hosting Talk. If you see a company mentioned prominently and advertising, then they most likely have a strong hosting brand.
Uptime – If you truly need 100 percent uptime you’ll have to pay for it. Budget web hosts offer the best compromise between reasonable uptime and a great price. That being said, most websites can survive very modest amounts of downtime for emergency patches, or other preventative maintenance. If you need to have guarantees regarding uptime, check to see if the hosting provider offers a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
SLA’s – Service level agreements or SLA’s are the promise that a hosting provider gives you regarding the uptime of your website or server. Most of the higher end hosting products (typically VPS hosting, Cloud computing and dedicated servers) will come with an SLA. If you need assurance on your website’s uptime, ask about the SLA. While an SLA won’t prevent outages, it will compensate you for any outages by paying you back some of your hosting fees – proportional to the outage. Also, the SLA is an indication that the hosting provider is serious about ensuring that your budget hosting plan is as stable and reliable as it can be.
Budget Web Hosting Content Provided by iPage iPage Web Hosting
Budget Web Hosting – What to Look For
Design and development professionals who are looking to reduce costs in these transitional economic times have increasingly turned to budget web hosting products to help them lower monthly costs and increase profits. So how do professionals assess and purchase discount hosting products? Here are a few thoughts.
The Budget Web Hosting Landscape
When considering budget web hosting products, a buyer will generally break these products into one of several basic categories according to account type. Below are listed the traditional account breakdowns with a brief description of each.
Ad Supported or Free Hosting
This category of hosting is generally for non-business use and consists of those accounts that offer an extremely limited amount of disk space and bandwidth in exchange for displaying 3rd party advertising such as banner ads or Google AdWords. In addition to being limited in size and scope, these types of accounts can also be subject to frequent slowdowns or outages as the transitory nature of the customer base attracts potentially unsavory co-tenants on your shared server.
Discounted Shared Hosting
A cut above free hosting accounts are deeply discounted shared accounts which typically charge just a few dollars or less per month. The fact that discounted shared hosting accounts require payment strongly discourages the same types of abuses that can occur with free web hosting accounts – a definite plus. One potential pitfall is the fact that to keep the operating costs as low as possible, deeply discounted shared hosting operators may attempt to stuff as many accounts as possible onto a single server as possible. This is where getting a current customer referral or conducting proper market research becomes critical to your success.
ASP.NET Hosting
For those customers needing use Microsoft’s .NET platform, an ASP.NET hosting provider is a must. This account is pre-configured on an ASP.NET server which the hosting provider maintains. This maintenance activity includes not only the usual monitoring of server performance and uptime, but also installing the sometimes frequently needed patches from Microsoft to address software updates. An additional bit of credibility is the Microsoft Gold Certified credentials coupled with Microsoft certified engineers.
Virtual Servers or VPS Hosting
A bridge between shared server hosting accounts and dedicated servers is a virtual server – also known as VPS hosting (that’s an acronym for Virtual Private Server hosting). Virtual servers have dramatically increased in popularity along with the growth of better virtualization software. This is software that emulates a dedicated server by using a fraction of the server’s total resources to execute programs like a complete and stand-alone dedicated server. There are various virtualization platforms, but generally speaking you can get a virtual server in either a Linux OS or a .NET OS powered by Microsoft’s hypervisor. The advent of less expensive hardware and software for virtualization has created a discount virtualization hosting product that is quite viable.
Cloud Computing or Cloud Hosting
As there are often contradictory descriptions of exactly what constitutes ”cloud computing” we present the Wikipedia definition here. ”Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid. Cloud computing is a paradigm shift following the shift from mainframe to client–server in the early 1980s. Details are abstracted from the users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources. It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet. This frequently takes the form of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through a web browser as if it were a program installed locally on their own computer.”
Dedicated Servers
While one may not think of dedicated servers falling under the auspices of ”budget hosting” – there are a number of discounted dedicated server hosting products which bear mentioning here. A dedicated server is a server whose use is restricted to just one customer or website. This means that the resources are allocated directly by the owner to their own sites. A key feature of dedicated servers (and also virtual servers) is root level access. Root level access is a special user account used for system administration. A key consideration in discounted dedicated servers is whether the server is considered ”managed” or ”unmanaged”. A managed server generally means that the hosting provider will look after any problems with the server, the connectivity to the network, any software patches that are required, or correcting any malicious activity that may occur on the server. An unmanaged server places the responsibility for the aforementioned items on the server administrator designated by the buyer (dedicated server hosting customer).
Things to Consider When Purchasing Budget Hosting
Value versus Price – With any of the budget hosting products listed above the cheapest price doesn’t necessarily mean the best deal. That is because one needs to look carefully at the brand, the account specifications, the guarantees, and the service component of the offering. Therefore, the lowest cost product may simply be the most stripped down product or the product that offers the lowest level of service. What you really want is the best value for the money. That means selecting a budget hosting plan that combines the lowest price with the highest service component and specifications.
Security – As mentioned previously, in an effort to wring the most cost out of the hosting and to generate sufficient profits it is possible that a deeply discounted shared hosting offering will attract unsavory neighbors on your shared server. At the very least you should ask questions about how secure the server is, and what provisions are made for backing up your valuable website data.
Reputation – One of the best ways to get a great budget hosting deal is to stick with a known quantity in the hosting business: a company with a good brand. You don’t have to look hard to find a reputable hosting provider. There are many out there and they can be identified by the way that current customers refer to them online. They use accolades like ”great” and ”fantastic”. You can also always check out great hosting resource sites like The Hosting News and Web Hosting Talk. If you see a company mentioned prominently and advertising, then they most likely have a strong hosting brand.
Uptime – If you truly need 100 percent uptime you’ll have to pay for it. Budget web hosts offer the best compromise between reasonable uptime and a great price. That being said, most websites can survive very modest amounts of downtime for emergency patches, or other preventative maintenance. If you need to have guarantees regarding uptime, check to see if the hosting provider offers a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
SLA’s – Service level agreements or SLA’s are the promise that a hosting provider gives you regarding the uptime of your website or server. Most of the higher end hosting products (typically VPS hosting, Cloud computing and dedicated servers) will come with an SLA. If you need assurance on your website’s uptime, ask about the SLA. While an SLA won’t prevent outages, it will compensate you for any outages by paying you back some of your hosting fees – proportional to the outage. Also, the SLA is an indication that the hosting provider is serious about ensuring that your budget hosting plan is as stable and reliable as it can be.
Source: Budget Web Hosting – What to Look For
(The Hosting News) – Virpus Networks, Inc, a leader in budget VPS Hosting announces the continuation of its a la carte VPS service – VirtuPulse.com.
In March of 2006, Virpus launched GetAVPS.com – the very first VPS customization service offered on the market at that time. Today, the brand has died off, however with the release of VirtuPulse, Virpus hopes to bring back to light its VPS customization services it has offered since near inception.
“Over time, we lost focus of GetAVPS.com, and allowed it to die off. With more and more demand for customized solutions, we figured it was time to re-launch this service, under a new name and more aggressive pricing” says Kenneth Odem, the co-founder and Chief Executive of Virpus Networks, Inc – originally founded in Indianapolis, Indiana.
About Virpus Networks, Inc.
Founded in February of 2006 by Kenneth Odem, Virpus Networks is a leading provider in virtualized solutions. Virpus Networks today is a sustaining profitable company, that has the mission of providing business grade solutions at highly competitive price points with hundreds of customers from all across the globe.
Virpus announces the launch of VirtuPulse -a full a la carte VPS service
Budget Web Hosting Content Provided by iPage iPage Web Hosting
Hosting your first blog takes some planning. There are a few different options you can choose to get started. Some blog designers, having hosted their own blogs before, opt to host their own blog on their own computer. This saves them a couple bucks in hosting fees and allows them complete control over their server. But let’s face it: it’s not 1996 anymore and most people are better of letting a hosting company take care of absolutely everything.
You won’t be able to physically reboot your server, for example, but this will not prove to be an inconvenience because remote reboot options are available with most hosting companies nowadays. The average blog owner will probably never have to reboot anyway, a good shared hosting platform should be more than enough for most people.
Many people choose to use WordPress to start their first blog. WordPress is a feature rich, open source blogging software that allows you to set up your own blog through the Apache Web server. While WordPress is quite demanding when it comes to server resources, this will only represent a problem if you end up receiving huge volumes of traffic.
You have to install WordPress yourself but it isn’t as complicated as you might think. You also have to install PHP and a MySQL database on your server as well. Most hosting providers have PHP/MySQL installed by default, so there’s no need to worry about this issue.
If this technical mumbo-jumbo seems a bit too complicated, you may opt to host your blog on one of the free services offered by the company WordPress.com or Blogger.com. Both of these are awesome sites to get your blog up and running. The best thing about these sites is they are easily indexed by the search engines. This means that any information you present through them will get listed by the search engines fairly quickly.
Search engines use complex algorithms to determine what quality content is, what gets listed and what gets discarded from their search results. If you follow the content rules, you can find your blog at the top of the search engine listings in no time. In a great majority of cases, you want to blog about and include keywords that are low in the competition scale but juicy when it comes to search volume.
Hosting your first blog should be a learning experience. You should be prepared to try certain things out and fail but always learn from your mistakes. Learn what you did wrong and make reparations to make your blog even better than it was before. You can blog about whatever you want, just make sure the content is high quality. There is nothing worse to a website visitor than having to drudge through worthless text they don’t want to read. It’s a surefire way of making sure that the visitors never come back. If you ever want them back as a visitor, you’ll have to do it in disguise and create a whole new blog and graphics set.
With that said, just treat hosting your first blog as something important but not complicated. It doesn’t take much knowledge to get your first blog hosted. That is as simple as going to the nearest free blog host and signing up. It’s what you do with your blog that counts. Just like in the ocean, you have to treat the environment with respect, not fear. Don’t be afraid that the visitors won’t take interest in your blog, as the Internet is very impersonal in some cases. As long as you provide quality content that people want to read, you should do very well. Get some people together to take a look at what you are posting on your blog to gain an honest opinion of what people will think. If you get a positive response, find out what you did right and expand upon it.
After you get your first reader and subscriber base, you should be on the right path. Once you start receiving more traffic, you can think about upgrading to a hosting plan which puts more resources at your disposal. So which are you going to choose? Are you going to try and host the blog on your home PC by yourself? Do you have enough bandwidth resources to do that? Are you sure you are savvy enough to know what you’re doing? Or are you going to choose to host your blog on a paid service (the option we recommend for reasons should be obvious)? What about a free blog hosting service? Whichever way you go, hosting a blog is really easy.
Here’s what we’d recommend:
Register your own domain and don’t use free services like Blogger. Having complete control over your site and domain helps a lot.
Start with a shared hosting plan and take it from there.
Once you start receiving more traffic, install WP-Cache and if that will not be enough, ask your hosting provider what hosting plan you should switch to. In most cases, a VPS will be more than enough but if you are running a blog with a lot of plugins (plugins tend to be quite demanding when it comes to system resources), you might need to go with a dedicated server at a certain point.
There are many guides available on the Internet that can walk you through hosting your blog and tweaking WordPress. There are also many others who will show you how to host a blog on one of the free blog hosting sites like Blogger. Whatever the case, blogs can and will generate crazy amounts of traffic if you do your job right.
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