Newbie Guide to Website Hosting

If you're just getting started in Internet Marketing or any Web-related activity, you probably have lots of questions about Website hosting. There are many options available and monthly fees range from a few dollars to a hundred dollars or more. And you definitely don't want to make a choice and then realize shortly after that you should have gone with something different - moving sites can be a pain. So how does a newbie figure out what's right for their needs? Read on...

Shared Hosting



The first type of hosting you'll find is shared hosting. Shared hosting means that you are given a block of hard drive space on a server that houses other accounts as well. You are sharing the server's resources with dozens or even hundreds of other customers. And if the shared hosting account allows you to host multiple Websites, this means that there can be thousands of Websites living on this one server.



Let's look at the good things about shared hosting. It is the most inexpensive type of hosting, which is a major plus for those just starting out. It usually includes a control panel (most often cpanel or plesk) which makes it easier to configure things on your hosting account. You often get an assortment of script installers (Fantastico is one of the more popular ways of providing this) which allow you to add a blog, a shopping cart, a guestbook and other options to your Website.



On the negative side, using shared hosting means that your Website is, to some extent, at the mercy of other sites on the same server. If another site is running a script that uses a lot of the server's memory or processing power, it can slow down or even interrupt access to the other sites on the box. A good hosting provider will usually catch this problem and resolve it with the owner of the offending site, but it can still cause unnecessary headaches. Another potential problem is with spamming. If someone else on your server is sending out a lot of spam e-mail, the server's IP address (the unique address of the server on the Internet) can be blacklisted by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) meaning that email sent from your Website might not get through, even though you aren't the one spamming people!



Shared hosting is a good way to start if your Websites will be just HTML pages without any major scripts running, or if you don't plan to send out a lot of email through the mail server. The pricing can't be beat, but you have to be aware of the limitations and potential pitfalls I've outlined above.



One shared hosting provider I'd recommend is:

Omnis Network

Virtual Private Server/Virtual Dedicated Server



A step up from shared hosting is the VPS or Virtual Private Server (also called Virtual Dedicated Server or VDS). VPS hosting is similar to shared hosting in that you share a physical server with others. The big difference is that the server is outfitted with something called virtualization (Virtuozzo is one of the most common solutions used). Virtualization basically splits up the server's resources into defined and dedicated blocks. Whereas with shared hosting, another user's site can hog the physical server's resources and bring all the other sites to a crawl, with VPS you get a certain amount of RAM and a certain percentage of processor usage that is dedicated to your sites. Similarly, each virtual server, or "chunk" of the overall physical server usually has it's own IP address, thus reducing the potential for your IP being blocked because of someone else's spam.



On the negative side, the cost of a VPS solution is usually significantly higher than a shared hosting package. Expect to spend about $40 to $90 a month. Look for coupons or specials that will either reduce your monthly cost or increase the level of resources assigned to your account without increasing the cost. And speaking of resources, make sure that you get a minimum of 128 MB of RAM (256 MB is strongly recommended). You also want to look for "burstable" resources, meaning that you can "borrow" unused resources beyond your dedicated limit for short periods of time. Another thing to watch out for is that many of the cheaper VPS packages do not come with much, if any, management of your virtual server. This means that you are responsible for installing any scripts you need (including a control panel in some cases). Unless you are a major tech geek willing to learn a lot about server configuration, try to find a managed VPS service that includes an already installed control panel (again, cpanel and plesk are recommended). It will save you a lot of headaches. Also look for WHM (Web Host Manager), which allows you to create sub-accounts for all of the domains you want to host.



Recommended VPS/VDS providers:

EasyCGI VPS Hosting

midPhase VPS Hosting

Dedicated Server



Hosting your site or sites on a dedicated server means that you are the only customer of the hosting company on a given server. You have the entire server and all its resources to yourself. No one else to bog down the server with complex scripts, no one else to get the IP address blacklisted for spamming. Just you. It sounds great, but the cost ($100 per month and up) is often prohibitive for many folks, especially those who are new at Internet marketing. Additionally, while you can sometimes find good deals on a dedicated server, there is usually a catch. That catch is that you take full responsibility for the software that is running on the box. You are responsible for updating to the latest version of the Apache web server, the latest version of PHP, the latest version of mySQL, etc. You are also responsible for making sure that security holes are patched so that your server doesn't get hacked. In short, you probably have a lot to learn before you are ready for this type of responsibility.



That said, there are managed dedicated servers available, where someone at the hosting company takes care of some or all of these responsibilities. Of course, this costs even more money.



I don't recommend a dedicated server for anyone just starting out, unless you're a network admin who just quit his or her job to pursue the work-from-home dream that Internet marketing promises. Otherwise, steer clear until you have made enough money to pay for the fully managed dedicated server or to hire your own server admin.



So what should you do if you're just starting out? I'd recommend starting with a good and inexpensive shared hosting provider until you learn the ropes and get comfortable with Web hosting. Once you've got some experience, move to a VPS solution. A smart way to go is to look for a hosting company that provides both shared and VPS plans - they may be able to help you move your sites if and when you need to upgrade your plan. (Both EasyCGI Hosting and midPhase Hosting - see links above - offer shared and VPS plans - check them out.)



Finally, the best tip I can give you is to make sure you understand what you're getting in your hosting plan. Check the list of features against what you plan to do with your sites. If you are planning to run an ASP script, don't sign up for Linux hosting - you need Windows hosting for ASP, in most cases. If you are planning to run a PHP application, make sure the plan you sign up for supports PHP (most do, but the point is to be diligent in checking your requirements before you sign up).



A good hosting provider can be a valuable asset to your online business for years to come. A poor one can be a major obstacle to success. Follow the advice I've provided here and you should be in good shape.

Kevin Ryan is an Internet marketer and SEO expert who has worked in the Web industry for over 12 years.

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Searching for a domain to host your website?

Who is bothering to get a domain for their website by paying a ransom? Who wants to maintain old procedure of owning the domain for their websites? Besides, there is a new way to make the websites accessible through the internet. Web hosting service is a technique to make the websites available in the internet for lease or under an agreement of ownership for a certain period. It is provided as a general Internet access plan. There are many web hosting service providers who are ready to give you domains at very competitive prices. Make use of this facility and launch your website in an efficient prospect.

The current “use and throw” approach among the people on everything leads to the promotion of the web hosting network. There are many web hosting networks in the market today which help the individual or the organization by providing the domain name for their website, memory space for data, email services and bandwidth as a single package. Some companies offer free web hosting services with limited resources like memory spaces and bandwidth and they may support advertisement supported hosting. Shared web hosting is a technique where a website can be placed in the same server along with many other sites. This service enables shared usage of CPU, memory and other resources.

Ajax hosting is the practice which allows faster development and healthy applications. Some of the shared Ajax web hosting services is only enabled in windows platforms as they mainly require Windows servers. Almost all the Ajax web hosting companies provide money back guarantee. In competition with the Ajax hosting companies are the linux hosting service providers. Linux web hosting services are appropriate for websites which use linux hosting features like MySQL database, PHP programs and Perl programming. Linux web site hosting is powerful and reliable and also, it is open source software. Hence, cheap linux hosting services with better quality and reliability are available in the market. Another concept of Virtual dedicated servers or virtual Private servers use divided server resources into virtual servers. The resources are allocated in such a way that it does not directly reflect the underlying hardware. Dedicated hosting service provides the user the full control over the web server. The user is responsible for security and maintenance issues. Self managed service is a classification of dedicated service which is more accepted due to its less expensive schemes. Cluster hosting, as the name suggests, has several servers hosting the same content in order to utilize the resources in a better method.

Another new technique called cloud hosting permits reliable, scalable and powerful hosting and is clustered and balanced servers and follows utility billing system. So, if you have to avail for internet access for your website, then choose the web hosting service that best suits your budget and the website requirements. For a personal web page it is recommended to go for single page hosting services. For a website representing an organization, the complete package including database support, bandwidth, and email services and other resources is a wise option.

The article about casting is written by author Calvin Lee who contributes articles on various casting calls, talent shows and so on.

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What is bandwidth and what website elements use it up?

Bandwidth is the amount of Data, measured in GigaBytes, that can be transferred (downloaded) from your web space each month.

This means if one visitor downloads a 4MB Music File, for example, from your website (public_html folder) it will cost you 4MB in bandwidth. So if ten visitors download the 4MB Music File, or one visitor downloads the 4MB Music File ten times, either way it will cost you 40MB of bandwidth in total. However. It is not that simple because each web page viewed also costs bandwidth. For example. If you have a Music Product Web Page that consists of 1MB of Introduction Text and 1MB of Music Pictures it will cost you 2MB of bandwidth each time that Music Product Web Page is viewed (downloaded into one visitor's web browser, from your public_html folder into their computer). And each time a visitor views (downloads) the 2MB Music Product Web Page and then downloads the 4MB Music File it will cost you, another, 6MB of bandwidth. Times that by ten visitors and it will cost you 60MB of bandwidth in total.

So when choosing a Web Hosting Package you should first calculate how many visitors you expect to visit your website per month (i.e. 1,000). Then you assume each visitor will view every web page at least once. Let's say you have ten web pages making up your website that use 1MB of bandwidth each. So 10MB of bandwidth usage. That means 1,000 visitors viewing 10 web pages each (using 10MB of bandwidth each), which is the equivalent of 10,000 web pages being viewed (downloaded), would require 10,000MB of bandwidth. Or put another way, 10GB of bandwidth. 1,000MB is approximately equivalent to 1GB. In reality, unless you have a "Downloads" website, each web page should not use up 1MB of bandwidth at all. So you should get more like 1,000 visitors using only 1GB of bandwidth, which is the equivalent of 1 visitor using 1MB of bandwidth to view (download) your whole website. In turn, 5GB (5,000MB) of bandwidth should be able to accommodate approximately 5,000 visitors. Remember. This is based on each visitor viewing your whole website (every single web page). If your average visitor only views five web pages then you will accommodate twice more visitors of course.

So far you have calculated 1MB of bandwidth usage per visitor, per view of your whole website. However. You should be aware that it is not only your visitors who are using your bandwidth.

WHAT / WHO  ELSE  USES  UP  MY  BANDWIDTH?

The Search Engines  Search Engines not only scan your website (public_html folder) looking for words/phrases, email addresses and other information, from within your web pages, in order to list it but they also store (CACHE - pronounced: cash) a copy of your web pages on their server. This is so that the general public can view those cached (stored) web pages when your Web Hosting Provider's server (computer) is not allowing your website to be viewed, perhaps because you ran out of bandwidth and/or because their server has temporary problems for example.

The CPanel  Your CPanel (Website Control Panel) might not be available to you, depending on the terms & conditions of your web hosting package/provider, if you run out of bandwidth. This is because certain operations you carry out using your CPanel involve bandwidth. Downloading your email, from your web space into Windows Mail or Outlook Express for example. Downloading files using the File Manager control panel or a FTP Account. And so on.

Website Linkers  Websites that make a link to one or more of your web pages will be using your bandwidth indirectly whenever that link is clicked on. For example. If your website is productsandservices.com and you have a web page called products.html, any website linking to your product web page (productsandservices.com/products.html) is inviting its users/visitors to click on that link and therefore directly visit your product web page. This means those users/visitors will be downloading the content (text, images, video, music and so on) of your product web page and more importantly be using your bandwidth. This may seem fine, because you want other websites linking to your web page(s) in order to make your website more well known, but the downside of this is too much traffic (too many websites linking to your web pages, bringing too many visitors who use up your bandwidth).

Too much traffic can become a problem if you have a FREE Video Download link in your product web page for example (i.e. productsandservices.com/video.wmv) that too many websites are recommending and linking to. For example. When you get one visitor clicking on your FREE Video Download link, who originally came from a recommended website link or directly from your own website, that free video (file) download should not use up too much of your bandwidth. Especially if the video (.wmv file) is reasonably small (i.e. 10MB or less - Approximately 5 Mins or less). The problem arises when you get a couple of hundred visitors clicking on your FREE Video Download link. That is when bandwidth becomes your nightmare and enemy.

Curious Visitors  With too much traffic comes too many "Curious Visitors". These are visitors who are just curious to know "What is your website all about?", "Who are you?" and "What can your website do for me?". There is nothing wrong with them, because they are the same visitors who might become "Regular, Buying, Visitors" one day and/or spread Word-Of-Mouth about your website, it is just that while they are curious visitors they remain "Bandwidth Users" or "Bandwidth Guzzlers!!" as well. In fact, they do help to get your ratings up with the Search Engines so they are not all bad!! The only way to effectively get rid of them though, if you are struggling with your bandwidth, is to introduce some sort of membership scheme to your website.

Blogs and Forums  Before someone can view a blog post (article) or forum post (message) in their web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer) the content (i.e. text) of that post has to be downloaded first, from your website (public_html folder) onto their computer. This means some of your bandwidth is used in the download process. As explained at the beginning of this section, this type of bandwidth cost applies to any web page that needs to be viewed and any file that needs to be downloaded.

HOW  TO  DISTRIBUTE  YOUR  BANDWIDTH?

With the above knowledge you should be thinking more about bandwidth distribution. For example. Many people, when they first build a website or have one built, make the mistake of creating their whole website in one go with a mentality/view of When the website is finished it will make me, and my product/service, look Professional and Established. This is great if you can afford the bandwidth associated with the features found on a professional, established, website but not so great if your website only looks professional and established with no features on it due to lack of bandwidth. I am talking about professional features such as Product Demonstration Videos or Video Tutorials that are viewed/downloaded by hundreds of curious visitors whereby you can afford them bandwidth in the hope of making some of them buying visitors; A Helpline that allows your visitors to download helpful .pdf files; And web pages that are full of images, presented in a slideshow, for example. All of which can be bandwidth heavy when you have hundreds of visitors only, never mind thousands of visitors.

So what is a good way to distribute your bandwidth? Answer? One way is to distribute your bandwidth in stages by paying for it in stages. For example. Do not build your website with professional features on it at first, until you know how many people will be visiting your website, therefore saving yourself a certain percentage of bandwidth (both in terms of bandwidth usage and money costs). Or put another way. Why pay for 100% of your bandwidth needs, which includes professional features, when you are only just starting to get traffic (i.e. only 25% of your bandwidth is currently being used because you only have 110 visitors a month to your website). In other words. Do not pay for 20GB of bandwidth now when you only need 5GB of bandwidth now - In the future you might need 20GB of bandwidth, but that is in the future. Many web hosting providers allow you to upgrade your package.

STAGES TO FOLLOW:

Build up your website content with well written articles at first, without any downloads, so that eventually you get other websites (Website Linkers) linking back to your website or well written article web pages. Each time one of their visitors click on their recommended link to your website, or well written article web pages, they will cost you bandwidth. This is because they will be viewing (downloading) the content of your website or web pages. This is a small bandwidth cost to pay though because those visitor's clicks will be raising your ranking/position with the search engines.

Set up a Google Analytics account in order to analyse your traffic (visitors, web linkers and so on). The bandwidth cost can be a little heavy depending on the frequency that Google Analytics scans your website for information/statistics and the amount of web pages on your website that need indexing (linking) for search engine results.

Do you need a Blog and/or Forum.....straight away? Although these are good for building interaction with your visitors they are bandwidth and web space wasters when they have no visitors. Making a blog and/or forum well known takes time. Usually 3 - 6 months but anywhere up to a year. You do not just copy and paste articles/posts into your blog and/or forum and then they become well known over night. You have to nurture them first by getting to know who your visitors are. So ideally you build a good website first, get visitor numbers up and then use a blog or forum as an advice section of your website for example. Many people make the mistake of thinking a blog is a website - It is not. You cannot do with a blog what you can with a website and vice versa. They are two different formats. The bandwidth cost for a blog or forum depends on how frequently your blog or forum is scanned and indexed by Google Analytics and the search engines for example, as well as how often the general public view it/them. A blog and forum tend to use more bandwidth simply because new posts (articles) are being added to them on a daily/weekly basis that need scanning and indexing.

NEVER  ATTRACT  THE  WRONG  CROWD

One way to get a huge amount of traffic is to advertise your website in various internet directories, internet classified ads, link your website on someone elses website/blog/forum and so on. However. When these methods work but do not bring your website enough traffic there is a tendency to get frustrated, which can lead to desperate measures. Take the following two scenarios for example.

Scenario 1 - Imagine you run a genuine Massage Services website with products on it (i.e. Massage Oils) that is not getting enough traffic. One option to improve your traffic might be to buy into a link-building/link-sharing list whereby you and up to 750 other websites agree to link to each others website in order to improve each others search engine rankings/positions and therefore bring in more traffic and hopefully more paying visitors. Regardless of the bandwidth costs of more traffic, the downside to this idea is that some of the websites in that list could of been blacklisted by the search engines; Making your website association (link) to those other websites a future possibility for the search engines to blacklist your website. And unless you check all of the websites in your list for virus infections, spamming, adult material and so on you might end up linking to some really bad website(s).

Scenario 2 - Sticking with the above genuine Massage Services website with products on it (i.e. Massage Oils). Another option for getting more traffic would be to link to genuine Adult Material websites, with you thinking their visitors might want to buy your products once they visit your website. The downside to this idea though (even if you were lucky enough to get such a link) is that you would get too many visitors, a very expensive bandwidth cost and some visitors visiting your website simply because they hope it will be selling something more than just Massage Oils.

What the above two scenarios are saying is that you should keep your website linked with websites you know are clean (trouble free) and more importantly with genuine websites that are genuinely within the subject matter of your website. It can be frustrating when first building a website but do not compromise your website's bandwidth, potential credibility and reputation by attracting the wrong audience.

VIDEO  BANDWIDTH

Having Video Tutorials or a Promotional Video for example on a website these days is a great way to promote/sell a product, but it is also the quickest way to run out of bandwidth. One bandwidth cost to consider, which many people tend to forget, is that some people will want/need to download your video(s) more than once. For example. They might be viewing one of your videos when suddenly they lose their internet connection, perhaps because their broadband disconnected naturally or because they ran out of time in their local internet cafe, and therefore want/need to view that video again. However. The next time they decide it would be better/quicker to download the video, onto their Flash Drive for example, so that they can watch it later. This is a typical scenario of why people are forced to download/view your videos again. And it is not because they want to cripple you with bandwidth costs, it is because they want to view your good video(s) - Especially if they have paid for them of course. So be aware of these bandwidth cost scenarios.

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Ideal Bandwidth Requirement For Your Website

When you have planned to buy a web hosting service, bandwidth is one of the major factors that you must be concerned about. Although many people recommend having high bandwidth, this is not an absolute requirement for all. In fact, having an excessive bandwidth may end up with tremendous frustration, since you have to pay a high fee against something that you are not actually using.


In this article, you will be able to discover plenty of useful information that will help you to make informed choice regarding the required bandwidth for your website.


The Concept of Bandwidth

Bandwidth refers to the amount the data transferred to the visitors computer from your web space. In other words, bandwidth refers to the amount of data transferred through the network wire in a specific period of time.


When you are planning to buy a hosting service, the bandwidth that your host will suggest you, is typically counted on a monthly basis. This is mainly due to the reason that the web hosting service providers pay a huge fee against their massive broadband internet connection. This is the few that is ultimately carried over to the consumers in the form of payment against their individual service plan.


Calculation of Bandwidth

There is a simple calculation for estimating the required bandwidth size of the website. The formula is: total size of the web pages in the site x monthly traffic volume = required bandwidth. Now here is a brief explanation of the formula along with an example.


Say, you have 5 web pages in your website and the average size of the web pages is 70 KB. That means, the total size of the web pages in your site is 70 x 5 = 350 KB. Now, if your expected traffic volume is 3000 per month, your required bandwidth should be 350 x 3000 = 2.1GB per month. This is the simplest formula for calculating web hosting bandwidth.


Bandwidth Management

If your site allows download facility, make it sure that your hosting plan combines enough bandwidth option. Offering download facility for software, music, flash or video files requires sufficient bandwidth support. In fact, if you only host PDF files on your server, it will take at least 1GB bandwidth in your web space.


So, if you want to manage the bandwidth size, you should be careful enough about choosing the web site components in order to keep the size minimum. As a matter of fact, you need to make the web page size as minimum as possible. Try not to use lots of images in your web pages and when you use images, do not forget to optimize them for web. Moreover, you must not allow multiple files downloading feature and try to keep them under 1MB of size.


No matter what your estimate is, there is always a chance of failure, so you must not forget to look at the fee for exceeding bandwidth in your monthly web hosting plan.

Rodrigo Rehn is a Linux Systems Administrator, Web Programmer, PHP Developer and CEO of Hospedagemlocal hospedagem de sites brazilian web hosting services.

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