Round Tale

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.

Budget Web Hosting – Does Your Site Fit Into a Shared Host?

(The Hosting News) – Parallels has announced the appointment of Birger Steen as President of the company. Mr. Steen comes to Parallels from Microsoft, where he was the Vice President of Small and Medium Business and Distribution and will join the company in September 2010.

Source: Parallels Names Micosoft Veteran as President

(The Hosting News) – Parallels has announced the appointment of Birger Steen as President of the company. Mr. Steen comes to Parallels from Microsoft, where he was the Vice President of Small and Medium Business and Distribution and will join the company in September 2010.

Parallels Names Micosoft Veteran as President

(Gawkwire.com) – Searchengineoptimisation.com, a leading SEO services company, comment on recent speculation that Google is set to refine its local search listings and alter the way that people search for local services online.

Speculation has been rife across the internet that Google may be about to make changes to the way their local search listings are presented after they released a statement when presented with some screenshots of a new looking layout of results which some users experienced. Google commented: “It is an experiment – we’re continually trying out new tweaks to a portion of our users,” after they were sent user-made screenshots from a vigilant individual who noticed changes to her local results when she inputted a search query.

The most obvious changes are in regard to the location map, which, in the screenshots, is on the right of the screen and scrolls down the page along with the searcher. The listings are also larger and resemble normal web results whilst Google seems to pull Meta information from the site as well as review snippets. As one of the leading SEO agencies in the UK today, Searchengineoptimisation.com feel this could make a difference to the way people use results, thus having an impact on the search engine optimisation industry.

“We think it’s great that Google are taking the time to work on improving local search – if these rumours turn out to carry weight, that is. It certainly looks encouraging and we’re optimistic that we’ll see these changes rolled out to more users sooner rather than later,” commented a spokesperson for Searchengineoptimisation.com. “We’re great fans of targeting your SEO geographically, which can make all the difference to small businesses. The internet is such a huge marketplace that it’s easy to get swallowed up, so it’s crucial to define yourselves online through effective SEO which is targeted appropriately. Your web profile and online reputation can make all the difference to your success!”

To find out more about Searchengineoptimisation.com and their SEO services, visit their website at http://www.searchengineoptimisation.com/.

http://www.gawkwire.com/seo_sem/seo_comapany_comments_on_rumoured_google_local_search_changes.html

(Gawkwire.com) – Rise – part of Fasthosts Internet Ltd. – announced it has been selected as a finalist for the Microsoft Partner Awards in the Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year award category.
 
Rise (www.rise-partners.co.uk), a new company from Fasthosts launched earlier this year, provides cloud and dedicated infrastructure as well as end-to-end solutions for channel partners. Rise’s partnership with Microsoft and utilisation of its technology, enables it to offer key services including virtual private server, dedicated server, exchange and email hosting and web hosting. 
 
Steve Holford, marketing director Fasthosts and Rise, said: “Rises’ partnership with Microsoft is a fundamental part of our offering to the UK market and key to our future growth. Whilst Rise is supported by a global giant in Fasthosts, we are in many ways still a start-up, so this nomination is important validation of our strategy and offering.”
 
Holford continues, “To date SMEs in the UK have failed to capitalise on the benefits and cost savings which cloud computing provides. Recent research commissioned by Rise found that 58 per cent of small businesses have not even heard of cloud computing – let alone deployed it. The truth is that SMEs do not actually care about technology – they are interested in the business benefits which technology can deliver. With that in mind, Rise has worked hard to deliver a robust, reliable and cost-competitive platform which allows vendors to sell services to SMEs through the cloud and deliver those business benefits. Our relationship with Microsoft is the backbone of this offering.”
 
Awards are presented in a number of categories, with winners and finalists chosen from a pool of almost 3,000 entrants worldwide. The Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year Award honors partners who have demonstrated solution innovation and a commitment to engaging with Microsoft. This award recognises Rise for teaming with Microsoft to address their customer needs through identifying new market opportunities and using technology innovation.
 
“Congratulations to the 2010 Partner Award finalists for delivering such creative and superior Microsoft solutions and services,” said Allison Watson, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft Corp. “It’s incredible to see the level of expertise our partners continue to exhibit as they create and deliver innovative solutions and services to grow their businesses, meet customer needs, and drive down costs.”
 
The Microsoft Partner Awards recognise Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions over the past year.
http://www.gawkwire.com/web_hosting/rise_named_finalists_for_the_2010_microsoft_partner_awards.html

(Gawkwire.com) – Xtern Software, Inc. has launched their new product, Code Barrel, the first private, hosted code snippet repository that will support any programming language.

Code Barrel was originally built to meet the needs of our own development team. We needed a secure way to privately store and share code snippets among our team that we could not find with other code repositories and didn’t want to have to contend with the overkill of a version control system. We’ve found that Code Barrel is one of the most efficient ways to bring a new developer up to speed.” states Keir Davis, President of Xtern Software.

Code Barrel offers users advanced search, tagging, and simple copy & paste functionality to easily find and reuse code snippets. The product will also track snippet revisions, supports commenting, and will email team members when a snippet has changed. Because it is hosted, all product updates are automatically provided to all users.

A free, Visual Studio plug-in for Code Barrel makes it very easy to incorporate it into a programmer’s workflow. An Eclipse plug-in is currently under development and will be available soon.

Product pricing starts at $4.95 per month, with the first 30 days, free. To sign up for the free trial, go http://signup.codebarrel.com.

Xtern Software Inc., based in Greensboro, NC, was founded in 2002 by Keir Davis. In addition to Code Barrel, Xtern Software provides custom development solutions for small businesses to large corporations.

http://www.gawkwire.com/web_design/xtern_software_launches_code_barrel.html

(The Hosting News) – Your business may need a dedicated server for a variety of reasons. Mainly, businesses use dedicated servers because it’s the best option for large scale operations. However, small businesses can also take advantage of a dedicated server if their profits are high enough to warrant their usage. See, in the hosting genre of business, companies usually choose the hosting option that is closest to their financial bracket. A small business could opt for shared resources but there is always the fear and doubt to deal with in the back of their mind. Sometimes shared resources go “on the blink” and a great majority of the time they are overloaded with customers to begin with.

This is one of the first mistakes that beginning online business make. More often than not, a hosting business will choose to go with the most “economical” solution instead of the higher priced competition. Why? Because they initially save a few dollars! The reality is, access times in online business is everything. If your website is slow, customers are very likely to turn the other direction and go somewhere else to buy their products. Online websites need to be highly responsive and react fast to a customer’s request. Many hosting providers with shared resources can handle less resource intensive requests, while larger scale websites require that a dedicated server be used.

A small business doesn’t necessarily mean a small amount of traffic or resource demand. In fact, in many cases the exact opposite is true. Small business websites can sometimes have a resource requirement that is above and beyond what they think they need. Also, websites that use shared resources in a shared hosting package are prone to down time. Think about it, if your business was down for a day or two, you would probably end up losing a handful of customers that are used to making frequent recurring purchases. This would be a terrible thing, especially if it happens more often than once in a while.

A dedicated server eliminates all of those possibilities and lives up to its server uptime guarantee. Making thousands of dollars per day from your small business website shouldn’t be trusted to just anything. Choosing a dedicated server from a hosting company with a strong history of positive feedback should be one of the first things you look for as a small business owner.

With shared hosting packages, you have a limited access potential for server controlled software. You can’t add customized software packages and suites. With a dedicated server, you are given full control of whatever you want to add. There are no restrictions barring the use of customized e-commerce software packages and background processes.

Have you stopped to think what would happen if your business experienced an incredible surge in resource demand? With shared resources, you can increase the amount of disk space and bandwidth you use but that’s about it. With a dedicated server, you can upgrade the hard drive, RAM, processor and bandwidth. Pretty much everything that could affect the quality of the website experience you deliver to your customers through your site, you can change. This is always good for businesses to have when sales and visitors start to increase.

Dedicated server hardware has its own hardware firewall. This increases the amount of system security you have. Shared system resources are inherently insecure because everyone has access to the machine. With a dedicated server, you are the only one who is going to be able to access the hardware.

With a dedicated server you have your choice of operating system. Windows NT or Unix. Windows NT is much more user friendly than Unix but Unix offers the most customizable features for your dollar. You get to choose which operating system will work best for your situation.

Dedicated servers often have the option of providing you with a data back up service for an extra fee. This is possible for dedicated servers but rarely for shared hosting packages.

Just in case you didn’t know, a dedicated server requires that you have immediate access to it in case something goes wrong. Most times, programs are able to automatically fix any bugs and problems. But, for larger complications that require the administrator to intervene, you will need to be able to monitor your server hardware.

A dedicated server performs a portion of their tasks through automation. However, a great deal of the tasks require that you have a prior level of knowledge and expertise in the field of server administration. If this seems like too complicated a task, it probably is. In that case you should opt to purchase a managed dedicated server package. This means that a server administrator will handle the technical aspect of server upgrades, downgrades and modifications to the site through the cPanel. And, to top it all off, you still get all of the wonderful features of a dedicated server.

Why Does Your Small Business Need a Dedicated Server?

(Gawkwire.com) – Webarena recently announced a new website design and SEO package specifically tailored to small local businesses. The source of demand for web design services has shifted from large international and national corporations to smaller regional and local businesses. Even small local family businesses are building websites and going online to take advantage of an increasing number of consumers using the Internet to source local services. Some web design companies are catering to this demand by offering solutions to suit the needs and budgets of small businesses: relatively inexpensive, easy to use websites and comprehensive support. Whilst these small businesses have smaller budgets, there are a lot of them.

What was once searched in the phone book or the local paper is now being searched in Google. Google’s search results are reflecting this trend with more and more searches now returning Google Places Listings (formerly called Google Local Listings). When Google recently upgraded and renamed their local listings, they stated: “…it’s just the beginning of what’s to come from our efforts to make Google more local.”

The current small business wave is expected to last for some time. And it is not just web design: small business are increasingly diverting their offline marketing budget to online marketing services such as search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine advertising.

http://www.gawkwire.com/web_design/webarena_announces_web_design_seo_package_for_small_businesses.html

(The Hosting News) – iHost.Net has released its easy DotNetNuke Hosting Solution. The new offering is targeted at users such as small businesses and non-profits who need an affordable, yet feature rich Content Management System (CMS). iHost.Net provides a turnkey, pre-installed version of DotNetNuke (DNN), with all the needed components such as modules and skins ready to go at the low price of only $14.95 per month.

John Norton, President of iHost.Net said, “We are excited about our DNN hosting offering. By offering DotNetNuke pre-installed, along with a wide variety of modules and skins, our customers will never have to worry about installation problems again. They just pick a site template, signup for an account at iHost.Net and their DNN portal is live. What used to take hours can be done in minutes.”
 
iHost.net is offering a free 15 day trial of their services. To access the trial, please go to the Template Gallery, pick a site template, and proceed through the simple signup process. (no credit card required).

For customers who want a powerful CMS but aren’t familiar with DNN, iHost.Net offers full Web design services for a small fee. For more information on their Web design services, please go to Build a Site For Me.

iHost.Net Releases Easy DotNetNuke Hosting Solution