Colocation – What Is It And How Can It Help You?

Smaller businesses will always be somewhat at the mercy of the larger companies who can pay for their own servers and the IT experts who can make sure that they keep running. It is pointless to look to compete with these companies, but you can follow some of the steps they take and keep yourself ahead of other companies of the same size as you. One way to go about this is to use colocation – a system that allows you to benefit from greater bandwidth and customer support than would otherwise be possible.

Colocation does cost more than standard web hosting, but offers you more for the money. It costs about the same as you would pay for a business grade DSL line providing limited bandwidth, and allows you access to far more bandwidth than the DSL line. It is also a more protected supply than most others, meaning you will have less downtime, and any time you do it will either be scheduled or fixed within moments. Because the colocation facility is dedicated to providing so much bandwidth, it is set up to withstand power outages.

As a colocation customer, you do have more responsibility for your server – indeed, in many cases it is advised that you buy a standard server in a colocation facility (this will usually cost between $150 and 200), and pay a small extra cost to have it maintained by the IT team at the facility. However, if you have your own IT experts, they can attend and carry out the maintenance that is required themselves.

Hosting for blog

So you have taken that first step. You are going to jump right into the blogosphere. That magical world where everyone is a journalist. Or a citizen-journalist as they are called.

A blog is short for “weblog.” A technology that allows you to post your thoughts, ideas, images, videos, emotions, rants, raves and more with just a few clicks. Indeed it is the onslaught of the blog that has heralded the new age of Web 2.0

But, even if the software technology is new, it is still dependent on the age old hardware technology of web hosting. If only that was not the case.

Accepting reality and moving ahead let us see what is needed from a web host for hosting a blog. Well, mainly the requirements for hosting a blog are similar to those required for hosting a web site. The disk space, bandwidth, and speed will make all the difference. Naturally, price will be a consideration too.

But other than the usual, there are some special considerations for blogs. For one, the hosting provider should allow the use of databases. Additionally, it would be great if there was a script that the hosting service provided that would install the blog for you. Of course, if you are technically qualified this may not help much. But, if you are a newbie, you want to stay away from all that jazz and simply focus on reaching out to your readers.

I am one of those buyers how are very price conscious. But, before you go ahead and purchase hosting, let me point out that changing web hosts can be a pain. So, think a little beyond the deepest discount you can get and focus on building a long term relationship with your blog host.

To begin with make sure that your blog hosting provider has been around for some time. It does not have to one of the big names in hosting. But, it must have an established track record. Second, try to ask some pre-sales questions. If they cannot service you well at the pre-sales stage, it is unlikely that they will come to your rescue after you are already a client.

Finally shop around and ask for opinions. If you are setting up more than one blog, try more than one hosting provider before settling on one for the long term. Once you find what you are looking for, you will know where to host your next blog.

Getting Listed in Major Search Engines and Directories

In order to succeed in today's ultra-competitive Web hosting market, getting listed in the Internet's major search engines and directories are not an option - it's a must. On today's Internet, search portals and success go hand in hand; therefore, it's extremely important to pay a great deal of attention to them. There are typically two ways to get listed in most search engines and directories: manual or automatic submission. Like their titles imply, manual submission entails actually visiting the search engine/directory and submitting your Web site to them; automatic submissions use software to speed up the process.

But as search sites continue to develop, they are becoming increasingly wise to automatic submission programs. In the past, many have unfortunately used them to try and trick search engines through various methods that involved spamming; therefore, it is highly recommended that you manually submit your Web site to search engines whenever possible. The same line of thinking should apply when considering services that claim to submit your site to 100+ search engines at a time.

Most of these services disregard one important fact: 85 of those 100 search engines are not important, and will be responsible for little (if any) traffic directed to your site. The only way to guarantee your pages being indexed is to do it yourself. What's more, some search engines have now developed a system whereby you need to enter a "code" displayed on your computer in order to submit a site, thereby preventing submission programs from working. Altavista has been doing this for quite some time, and now limits submissions to five pages per session.

Tuning Up Your Site for Submission

Before submitting your site to any search engine or directory, you'll want to make sure that your Web site is well-optimized for the search engine spider or editor that will (hopefully) visit your Web site after submitting it to them. And ensuring your site is well-optimized begins with your site's HTML tags and site text. There are a number of HTML tags you should know if you wish to show up anywhere near the top in search engine rankings. These are the TITLE tag, the ALT tag, and the META tag series.

The TITLE Tag

This tag, which is placed at the top of every HTML document, provides a summary of what your site is about to search engine spiders. It is crucial to try to include as many search terms in the title in a relevant manner.

The ALT Tag

While this tag is not often used any in any practical manner any longer (it was originally intended to display text when an image took too long to load and a user aborted, or if there were errors on the page), it is very important to engine spiders. Most of them will index the text within an ALT tag, so use it to your advantage and enter some keywords there as well.

META Tags

META tags are placed between HEAD and BODY tags at the beginning of an HTML document to inform spiders about the content of your site. These tags are crucial to your ultimate search engine ranking; spiders try to determine what your site is about and how to categorize it in their database largely through what your META tags say.

The Various Types of META Tags

While there are many META tags in HTML, search engines are usually only concerned with the keywords tag and the description tag. The keywords tag tells search engine bots what keywords you want your site to be associated with. The description tag contains a short description of your site that is often displayed in the engine's search results. Try to keep your descriptions short, as many bots will stop reading after 50 to 100 characters (although some will read up to 1000 or so). Here's an example of how to use META tags. Let's say, for example, your site focused on offering dedicated servers: Company Name: Dedicated Web hosting packages Most search engines will then display: [your site's name] Dedicated Web hosting.. cheap! Not all search engines will recognize your META tags. Some will read your ALT tags, or the first few lines of text they encounter on your site and will index that instead. It is therefore important to ensure that the opening paragraphs of your site contain a description of what that particular page is about. Also try to avoid repetition - make sure your keyword sequences for your ALT and META tags differ.

This will make your listing more concise, increase the chances of your site receiving a higher ranking, and ensure that the bot does not think you are spamming it. Once you've established what your META data will be, make sure your Web site's text corresponds to the keywords you have chosen. It is extremely important, however, to ensure that the copy contained within your site is concise, makes sense and is well-written; otherwise, search engine spiders (and human directory editors, too) will conclude that you are trying to trick them, and drop your site from their index completely with little chance of re-instatement.

Other Important Tips

Avoid password protected pages. Search engine spiders will not follow them.

Try to avoid using clickable image maps as menus. Many search engines ignore them.

Don't send engines to pages with redirects. Many spiders will not follow them.

Be patient. Most of these engines and directories will take four to six weeks to index your site in their database. If you still don't see results after six weeks, re-submit your sites. Failing that, you can even call them or email them and find out why your site hasn't been indexed.

How To Point Your Domain Name To The Web Host

By now you should have already registered your hosting account from the previous step . This step is simply to link your domain from the domain registrar to let them know that you have a server ready to host your domain. I’ll explain in detail how you get this done below but first you’d need to look for that welcome email your hosting company sent you after they have activated your hosting account. It looks something like this

Obviously i have removed some sensitive information from it. All you need right now are the nameserver addresses which i have highlighted in the above image. There’s usually 2 nameserver addresses that web hosting companies give you. Copy them up somewhere first. Now , depending on which domain registrar you chose you will need to login to their website and look for a link to change the default nameservers currently used by your domain. Here’s a few step-by-step guides by the domain registrar companies themselves about how to change the nameservers :

Godaddy.com – http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/664/setting-nameservers-for-your-domain-names

Namecheap.com – https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/767/10/how-can-i-change-the-nameservers-for-my-domain

Dynadot.com – http://www.dynadot.com/community/help/question/set-name-servers

Their instructions are pretty straight forward and easy to understand. In case you’re stuck just hit me up and i’ll help you out  :)

After you have done this step, you’d need to wait at least a day for DNS propagation for servers worldwide to sync your website’s new address to your hosting server. It usually is alot quicker than a day but i’d say 1 day just to be sure. After propagation is complete you can go login back to your hosting account and start building your website! There’s tonnes of scripts or CMS (content management systems) which are available free of charge on the internet. They are readily available and easy to use for beginners. My personal favorite would be WordPress as it has evolved from a blogging platform to a multi-funtion CMS. It’s easy to use and do not requite any knowledge of programming or coding at all, perfect for beginners. I’d suggest you to checkout the WordPress.org platform for starters.

I talk more in depth about the platform in a seperate article how you can setup a website/blog based on the WordPress platform. As always , if you have any questions or comments do contact me through my contact link available at the sidebar of this blog.

Choosing Cheap Web Hosting

It is not always easy to choose the right web hosting. Neither of it with little experience or for the total beginner. It is after all very important to think again before the account is created, for it is very difficult to move their website. Here, I will try to provide some solid tips on what you should think about when choosing web hosting.

The first thing to do before choosing a web host is to consider what is it used to. Are you such as cough a “heavy” site that will store large quantities of photos, movies, music or other heavy files, it is important to ensure that the hosting site you use allows you to store as much as you need. For such a purpose, it is also important to ensure that the hosting site is generous with the bandwidth, i.e. the amount of data you can transfer each month. Should you instead opt for hosting a web site that require advanced features, it can not be emphasized enough how much you will thank yourself if you have checked out carefully before so that the hosting site in question actually supports the technologies required.

Another, and for many extremely important, issue is how the support works and works. In this case, it is often to get what you pay for. With it you can not of course draw all cheap web hosting over a comb – it is clear that they also can have a very good support. Often, however, so that the cheaper web hotels manage their support via email. Do you have no problem with it could still be a cheap web hosting the right choice for you. Is it instead so that you prefer to manage your support cases over the phone, it may be worth considering if it is still not much to inject a few tens of the month for a hosting company with good support to ensure your needs. A good way to evaluate support before you decides to call / email support on any issue.

In order to specify what I previously talked about in terms of the technical bits that are important to think of it is such as databases, and such, and support for php / asp. These two pillars. Beyond this, you should consider whether will need to use the techniques that Ruby on Rails, cron jobs and other more advanced features. In most cases, web hotels very clear to display if they have support for these functions. Otherwise, it will not hurt to hear of the support, and in the same turn have a chance to evaluate it!

Web Hosting Domain Names

If you own a business, either a regular brick and mortar one or an online business, making sure you have a site is an important part of any marketing plan. These days, more than ever, having a domain name and web hosting for it has become important, as most people use the Internet to look for information and phone numbers, as well as opening hours and even the merchandise you have in stock. Unfortunately getting web hosting domain names isn’t as easy as one might expect and in many cases you need a bit of technical knowledge to get everything working.

If you would only have to choose the web hosting plan of a single company, life would be easier, but these days there are dozens of well reputed hosting companies and each one has its own offer of web hosting domain names. If you want to find the best web host offer,  you should spend some time looking around for a good package, which has all the elements you need to set up a successful site. Read on to find a few tips that might help you in your search for a great hosting package.

Support and service

If you’re not technically inclined, this part is especially important. Whenever you have a problem, like with the upload of some files or with site building, you should be able to request and receive support from someone that knows his job well. A great hosting company should have customers support available 24/7. In some cases, this support will be by email but sometimes you will also get live chat, with someone that is ready to help you as soon as you have a problem. If possible, also look for the possibility to get your money back if you decide that their web hosting domain names plan isn’t suitable for your needs.

Recommended

One method of picking a good hosting company is by looking at its testimonials. Customers tend to praise their hosting company if they’re satisfied with it. In general you will find that site owners are vocal in specialized hosting forums when they don’t get quality services.

Ease Of Usage

If you’re not used with dealing with the technical aspects of owning web hosting domain names, you need a company that has tools which are easy to use, ideally with a control panel which facilitates their use. The navigation of the site should be easy to use and it should include all the needed tools. Whenever you want to do something, the location of the tool should be handy and found immediately. Also, you should know details like whether the company allows the installation of different types of scripts. In other words, you need to know the limitations of your hosting account.

Features of marketing

As you are a business after all, you should insure that the hosting company has features like mailing lists, statistics of traffic and shopping carts, among others. These options help you run your business and allow you to keep track of your clients.

When to Choose an Application Service Provider

Application Service Providers (ASPs) provide an unparalleled level of service and support for externally hosted back-end applications. They differ from conventional hosting firms since they specialize in electronic distribution of mission-critical business applications.

ASPs combine software, hardware and networking technologies to offer a service-based application as opposed to a corporate-owned, corporate-run application. These offerings include enterprise resource planning (ERP) and collaboration tools as well as mail hosting and e-commerce applications.

Under the ASP model, the service provider owns all or part of the infrastructure on which these applications reside (some ASPs partner with other service providers for some pieces of the infrastructure) and coordinates the various hardware purchases, software licensing or development, and network connections that are necessary.

Customers rent the services from the ASP on a per-user, per-month basis. ASPs share costs among many customers, allowing for a much lower cost structure than traditional solutions. The popularity of ASPs is currently on the rise since corporate managers worldwide appreciate the cost savings they generate. Why spend the time and money involved in purchasing and installing an application you know you'll outgrow in six to 12 months when you can rent it?

Instead of expanding information technology (IT) divisions to build and maintain new business systems, many corporations now entirely outsource their new application requirements to ASPs. These providers bear the burden of building, implementing and distributing customized applications, mainly databases, to internal and external corporate audiences.

The ASP model thus substantially reduces many of the tasks associated with maintaining traditional client-server applications. Generally, the application vendor will handle all application deployment and system maintenance tasks, including backup and recovery, upgrades, network management, and user additions and deletions.

The most popular ASP solutions being adopted today include solutions for human resources payroll and benefits management. ASPs also have thrived by offering existing corporate collaborative software such as Microsoft Exchange, Project and the Office productivity suite.

ASPs hence differ from conventional Web hosting outfits since they offer integrated, proprietary platforms rather than base Internet services. The professional solutions they provide are not a hodge-podge of assorted Internet services and protocols. They are a highly developed, applications that are backed up by the broadest bandwidth and customer care systems available.

Because ASPs employ professional staff to develop state-of-the-art software and networking facilities, employing their services can become expensive.

Most ASPs charge their premier corporate clients hundreds if not thousands of dollars per month. The cost for application development is usually determined on a per diem basis, but is usually as costly.

Application Service Providers are therefore the most serious of Internet Presence Providers (IPPs), and should only be considered by enterprises needing to integrate and rationalize their IT operations.

Why Corporate Blogs Are Seen As The Quintessential Marketing Strategy!

Traditionally, companies had personal relationships with their customers, but this gave way to cold and impersonal management information systems. In the last few years, with the growing competition, decreasing customer interaction and changing customer attitudes, businesses have begun to realize the importance of restoring a human face to their companies.

This is precisely the reason why so many companies these days establish an online presence. Out of all the marketing strategies available for businesses, blogging is being claimed as a paradigm shift in the way companies connect to existing as well as future customers. A cover story on an issue of BusinessWeek as far back as 2005 reads, “Blogs will change your business.”

Corporate blogs are created by companies to meet their goals and marketing objectives in the most efficient manner possible.  Blogs allow the initiation of an ongoing and honest communication with the market, thus getting the customers involved and creating trust. The company enters into a conversation with an unlimited audience openly, in full view of everyone including its competitors.  Companies can fulfill customer needs as opposed to hard selling, which is an indirect way of turning them into customers.

Corporate blogs are usually of two types: Internal and external.  While internal blogs are those that are generally used by the employees to improve employee participation and discussion; external blogs are places where the company representatives post content and share their views with their audience.

Let’s look at what external corporate blogs offer companies:

Open Forum for Public Criticism

There are many corporate blogs that have high numbers of subscribers. For example, the official Google blog is among the top blogs worldwide.  Corporate blogs provide a platform for people to discuss, applaud or criticize anything related to the company openly.  This open nature of blogs gives visitors a secure feeling that there is no hidden agenda and they get what they see.  Over a period of time, this builds trust and increases the number of potential customers.

Window to Company Culture and Policies

Although, a corporate blog tries to accomplish the same goals as press releases do, this is done in the most informal manner.  This informal nature of the blogs allows companies to reveal the company culture and any changes in policies through their posts which are read by everyone that visits their blog.  These messages also spread through word-of-mouth or through back linking which is an integral part of blogging, and ensures company news reaches far.

Best Business Web Hosting For Small Business

Hi, Welcome to Businesswebhostingreview.com. My name is Jay Ho, I am an internet entrepreneur and an SEO expert. I am the owner of Reliable DC SEO, it is a search engine optimization company in Washington DC and it is currently ranking #1 for “DC SEO” on the Google search engine. I have 8 years of online experience and I own over 500 web properties including E-commerce store, small business websites and many blogs.  I have also built over 50 websites on my own. So you can say that I am an expert when it comes to web hosting and SEO.

Whether you host one website, or 100 websites, find a reliable website hosting company is crucial, especially when you are hosting your business website. From my SEO business, I often have clients come to me for web design or re-design, I have constantly educated my clients on different web hosting services and website hosting companies. Instead of repeating the same information to each client, I have decided to create this website to provide transparent and useful information from my personal experience. 

Hostmonster Review & Hostmonster Uptime Statistic In Real Time

Introduction to Hostmonster Web Hosting

Hostmonster.com is the web hosting company that offers web hosting plan at very affordable price and with great quality. Hostmonster web hosting plan is now price at $5.95 per month, very affordable price for a cpanel hosting plan. They are cheaper in price if compare to hostgator $7.95 or bluehost $6.95 hosting plan. Indeed, hostmonster is hosting partner of bluehost, they are the same hosting company. Hostmonster is the cheaper brand and came as the more affordable solution compare to bluehost.

Hostmonster Web Hosting Reviews

With our many years of web hosting experience with hostmonster, we really like this web hosting company. We would like to title them as the most affordable cpanel hosting plan at the highest quality. They hit the right spot in between price and quality, good balance in both world, and great value for the customers.

For the small price to pay, $5.95 per month, this hostmonster web hosting plan is with everything we every need.

unlimited storage & bandwidth
unlimited domains hosting
free domain name included
fast web hosting server & good response time
cpanel with Simplescripts installer
free website builder
Hostmonster Uptime Statistic and Review
Our hostmonster web hosting account has been monitored for many years, we are tracking their server uptime downtime and recording every events in detail. Off course, we are monitoring the website hosted and not the hostmonster.com website (as others did). Our uptime statistic is more accurate and represent our website uptime over the internet, the customer website uptime.

Best Features of Cheap Web Hosting

What features should you cheap web hosting company offer you?

Here are features of great web hosting.

When building websites there are many different techniques to use. In many cases, require them to your web host has a specific support for this. There is nothing you can count on there, but must in any case, check. Generally, this is not more difficult than to surf into our web site and check in the technical specifications, but in some cases may be required of you that you actually send an email to the company in question, or that you simply call them. It gives you a chance to try on the support to live up to your expectations. Below, I will try to guide you to how the additional features that you might be in need of.

PHP / ASP

Support for PHP and ASP has become an almost standard that web hotels offer. Usually offers webhost support for both languages, but in separate packages. Therefore, you must examine the language you will need and then be careful to choose the correct package from the outset.

MySQL / Microsoft Access databases

Is support for the above programming languages are often also support the respective database.

Cronjobs

To be able to schedule when a script to run (eg to clear away rubbish on the server or to do other heavy work) requires that your web host supports it. Do you have plans to use the it, you must also make sure that it is your web hosting.

Framework and other programming languages

You probably will sooner or later have a need for any additional programming or any framework to program in, or you already need. In the first case, it is smart to check it out so that there is support for so many different technologies as possible at no extra cost when you choose web hosting. In other cases – was the attention so you will not be disappointed in the post!

Start to make money online

The first article published today,I have access to the Internet has been a long time, I have been working on building networks. However, never use the Internet to earn money.
Last year, I quit my job, this is the third resignation. The reason is that I move to another city, the family is very important to me. Because the last job are very well on a time and pay,the city that i live now is very bad work environment. This makes me very depressed.

In many cases understanding, I decided to start walking the road of making money online. I know it is very difficult and some boring, but fortunately , I am not very fond of noise. I think I will stick to it. Here I would like to make some of their knowledge and learn the way through to the experience and I have the same friends.I would like to express some of my growing up here,and also want to have some friends that who agree with me.

My principles:

Learning is not necessarily successful, do not study will not be able to succeed.
Do not wait for opportunities, and to create opportunities.
Integrity is my biggest capital.
Sometimes the world is cold, I would like to heating with you.

Internet Marketing: Promoting Your website

The small business solution to promoting your site.

You’ve decided to open a business and planned out your Web site, even contacting a professional Web hosting company to handle everything. But now comes the part where you have to market yourself online. After all, how is anyone going to know the site is there if you don’t tell them about it?

But not everyone has an abundance of money to spend on advertising. Some companies are looking for ways to keep the bill low, but at the same time, effectively let others know that there is something new for them to consider. So what is the best way to market the site? Surprisingly, there are more ways than one:

Make Every Contact Count... Try Constant Contact1) Search engine submission is a good idea. There are so many of them out there now and it is a great way to gain exposure. Although search engine submission is simple, it can be time consuming, so be prepared. When registering with these engines, it is important that the site is running on the server of a professional Web hosting company, because search engines generally view free servers negatively.

2) Some will even claim that direct marketing is a good way of promoting a site and that a catchy subject line is the answer. New businesses should be weary of sending out too many e-mails of this type, for risk of being branded as a spammer. The best solution is to start your own mailing list, asking customers if they would like to receive information when it is available. A good way to get around this is to create a newsletter and have clients opt-in – thereby asking to receive the information. Constant Contact is a software solution that enables small businesses to grow their business from their customers and prospects (permission based list) with targeted, professional looking email communications. It is a web based solution, designed specifically for small businesses and is easy to use, affordable and takes no technical expertise. Click here free Trial Email Marketing.

3) Another great way of promoting your website is to advertise in e-zines (electronic magazines) because they reach a specific audience. By trading ads with other e-zines, it is a great way to get the message out there without having to spend a fortune. They are also beneficial because they position the business as a leader in the industry and build on customer loyalty. What a great reason to start your own!

4) Exchanging links with other companies (obviously not ones promoting the same product/service) can be a great way to bring more traffic to your site. In fact, some companies have achieved a million hits per month within 90 days of placing a link on another site. But even if this doesn’t prove effective, it will allow you to have the URL on more pages throughout the Web. When search engine spiders crawl the Web looking for information, the fact that your URL is on all of these pages will move the page up in rankings.

5) Join a news group and make sure to give your two cents. When promoting your website, be sure to include a signature at the end of each posting (no more than six to eight lines) stating the product and e-mail/Web address for the company. Each time a posting is put up, literally hundreds of people see the ad. If more information is needed, customers now have the means to find it. Even if they visit the site out of curiosity, word of mouth is the best advertising there is (and the least expensive).

6) Give things away for free – free articles to other sites or in magazines, free services that are needed in the market, free downloads, links to specific information or downloadable software.

7) Banner ads are still an effective method as they have been throughout the last few years. Banner exchanges can be a good idea, but a more successful approach is to place them on targeted Web sites. The only downside with banner ads, however is that they can become quite expensive, so make sure that you have good placement and that you’ve done your research to ensure the site reaches a specific audience.

8) Finally, if something new is coming out from the business, make sure to send out a press release. Although it can take time to write one, there are many free press release distribution services. Although some charge a fee, if it means of promoting your website, it might be a good idea.

Web Hosting For New Web Site – 3 Things to Know

Those of you who are looking to create a website for the first time are likely to have a lot of questions.  From your research it is likely that you have found that you will be needing web hosting and a domain name for your site. As a professional web hosting review expert there are three things that I think all new webmasters should understand about web hosting:

#1 – MOST EXPENSIVE DOES NOT EQUAL BEST BUT FREE IS BAD!

This is the best tip that I can offer to new webmasters.  There are a lot of web hosting providers out there that claim to offer “free” web hosting but in reality nothing good comes free.  The owners of these “free web hosting” sites have a desire to make money so they are forced to turn to different methods.   With free web hosting accounts you sit yourself up for spam and constant requests to upgrade to a paid subscription.  Free accounts also will place banner ads on your site, limit the amount of disk space you will get, and will give you a long domain name that no one will ever remember.  FREE web hosting is BAD web hosting and to this day I have yet to find a free web hosting provider that can offer the same quality support that a paid host can offer.

With this all be said it is also important to remember that you should not be paying too much for hosting.  Some well known web hosting providers like Godaddy want to charge you in excess of $8.95 a month for web hosting and then want to turn around and charge you even more for a domain name.  I would caution you from choosing a host like this because they do not provide the same quality service that other hosts can offer.  I would highly recommend choosing a host like Hostmonster or Bluehost because they can offer you unlimited bandwidth, disk space, and a free domain name for life for only $3.95 a month!

#2 – MAKE SURE YOU CAN GET 24/7 CUSTOMER SUPPORT

One thing that many people over look is the availability of customer support at all hours of the night.  This may now seem important to you now; however, if you depend on your website for money or promotion having no support at 2am could prove to be a problem in the future.   I would always recommend making sure the host offers 24/7 support before signing up.

#3 – SEARCH FOR DISCOUNT CODES

In this bad economy I would suggest that you look around every corner for savings and web hosting can be no exception.  If you are going to sign up for web hosting I would highly suggest that you do a little research by looking at the latest web hosting coupon codes.  For example, anyone who directly visits Hostmonster or Bluehost will be forced to pay their normal rate of $6.95 a month; however, by clicking on one of our exclusive banners below you can get the exact same hosting for $3.95 a month which is the best rate that they offer hosting.

* We personally suggest that you choose Hostmonster or Bluehost so be sure to click on one of the banners below to get the exclusive discounts:

Professional Web Hosting

Professional web hosting usually works well both for businesses and for personal purposes. We’re talking here about shared hosting accounts in many cases, as not every business needs a dedicated server to run their site, especially not in the beginning when the number of clients is small. The difference in the quality of hosting that you need appears later, when you have many potential clients visiting your site and their number threatens to bring your site down. With professional web hosting you usually get a dedicated IP address, which is recommended for SEO purposes. If you have a shared IP, you risk sharing it with a spam site, and that would damage your credibility.

Besides a dedicated IP, a professional web hosting package should also come with a great uptime record. Ideally, the hosting plan should also come with the option to add as many databases, email accounts and domains as you need.

When you’re looking for a company and you take their support in consideration, you shouldn’t expect them to walk you through every single step when you have a problem. Obviously, they need to help you when it’s a hosting related issue, but they can’t help you if it’s a problem that is caused by your site and not by their server. Most sites should work just fine as long as they’re not very complicated, but whenever you go past the basics, you risk that something will go wrong. Even though they can’t fix all your problems, a good support will go the extra mile and help you even in situations when it’s not their responsibility.

Professional web hosting will be all the things I just mentioned. It will be reliable, it will be oriented towards the customer and it will offer you everything you need at an acceptable price.

What to Look For in Website Hosting

If you intend to publish a website on the internet, it is essential that you select an appropriate hosting service. These service providers  store your site’s files in their database and they would distribute it live online.However,  If you publish a website  you shouldn’t simply opt for the first hosting company you find or even the first one to be suggested to you. There are certainly a number of factors that you need to take into account.

Options

Every business which offers web hosting has several customized packages for you to select from. Each plan will have a unique selection of functions and benefits. When you are looking to host a website, you will want to evaluate these plans carefully. Which one provides  more value for your investment? Which one is appropriate for your website? Examine each plan from each company side by side. Some of them may appear inexpensive initially but in the long term, you may find that you spend more with this program when compared to others. This is because companies commonly charge less when you select a plan of 2 years or more. If you intend to be online for the long term, choose a plan which will offer you  significant discounts.

In choosing your web hosting plan, you should also take into account the storage space which will be provided to you. Some programs offer unlimited file space which is ideal for websites that contain many large files such as music, videos and photos. However, if your online site would consist primarily of text, then  limited storage space may be adequate.

Features

Another key factor when you put up a website is the features of the hosting company. Some of them may make available a number of software and free gifts that you may not really need while some may provide just a few functions but these might be the most beneficial for you and your site. One excellent feature for instance is the C-Panel. This will enable even non-programmers to successfully upload a website. It is a simple user interface that permits you to manage the backoffice of your site very easily.

Customer Support

Finally but absolutely of high importance; look for a hosting company with a reputation for good customer service. This will enable you to deal with any and all issues successfully. As a  case in point, if your site abruptly goes offline and you cannot access it, you can contact contact their customer service for prompt assistance.Good customer support is also essential for individuals who don’t have a lot of technical experience so that they can get help with questions and with tasks they are unable to complete on your own.