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Archive for the ‘Email Web Hosting’ Category

An all round self-skilled web site is the need of the hour for many people. Today the root businesses of many companies are on the shoulders of those sites, which have interactive quality to get a mob of people and can produce the business. Automated features can also play a “behind the scenes” role, by generating the qualities in one’s site like making it easy to use, smooth running and promoting online sales and password protection.

There are several ways by which one can generate such type of automation in his/her site, but all the processes engage either client side or server side scripting. There are several programming languages present specially designed for the web; such programming languages are used for writing scripts. Generally, customer side scripts are written in one of the best web programming languages i.e., Java. But some functions are to be accomplished through the scripting on server side; however, frequently used programming languages on this side are PHP, PERL, and CGI. PHP and PERL are fresher and are on every mouth in the market but one can’t ignore the mother of all web-scripting languages, CGI due to availability of features suitable to it.

Shopping Carts

No one can say that the online sales site is complete without a functioning shopping cart and generally best among them have been written in CGI script. CGI web hosting is ideal for shopping cart scripts because of it’s better interaction with majority of databases, which includes popular MYSQL and MS Access databases, it can be applied with simplicity of similar range on the servers like Windows, UNIX, LINUX, and MACOS, thus simply configured for sales tax and shipping cost calculations. In the market, PHP and PERL are used to apply on the newer shopping cart scripts, but the first choice still prevailing is the use of good old CGI web hosting scripts.

Password Shielding

There are several sites, which require some sort of registration and entry of a password for the user to enter the site’s features. One should need to do it due to the boundations of several reasons like simply a desire to pathway visitors for marketing reasons, like to allow postings on message boards and ensuring that users have paid any required fees associated with use of the site. One should apply the CGI scripts for the automated registration process and in the process of issuing user name/password and generally it is done in this manner only.

Form Managers

There are several people who don’t know about how the forms, they fill out online are handled. They must know that such forms are handled by CGI webhosting. When a user fills in that form and hits the “submit” button, a CGI script takes over and sends the contained data via Email or writes it to a database where the site’s administrator is able to access it later on.

Thus the above mentioned are some of the uses of the uses for CGI scripts on today’s web sites. Like these there are many more and if there is possibility for doing anything on the website, surely it can be done with CGI. PHP and PERL are gaining popularity due to any reasons, but CGI was the one since beginning with the user and is even not going anywhere. So as long as there are web sites, CGI web hosting will remain the Jack of all trade.

The one who is working on a website must be well aware about the checklist discussed below. The word website cannot be completed without the domain, hosting (web space) and web designing. There are countless companies offering this facility. Thus one must act prudently while dealing with any of these companies.

The following are the most common problems faced by most of the clients and can be even seen on the net such as –

User complain- every day, I get few phone calls of this sort:

Sir, My domain expires in next few days, but the company which registered it is out of business, Please RENEW it”

Sir, I want to transfer the domain to your server but I don’t have the domain control panel”

Dear Support Team, The domain is registered thru ‘X’ and his name is listed as REGISTRANT and Admin Contact, help me”

I have a website since 1998 but I am not getting any enquiries thru it. So what’s the point in having it renewed? “

My website is down most of the time, can you do anything on it? “

So above are the problems faced by most or let say by all the users? Thus the below checklist is required to deal with such problem-

Checklist for Domain NAME Registration

After getting registration of domain one must check the following things-

Is the registration of DOMAIN NAME is with an ICANN Accredited Registrar? Does the REGISTRANT NAME and ADMINSTRATIVE CONTACT is showing one’s name/email?

Is there Control Panel available with the Domain Registration Service Provider with username / password to manage/modify name servers & contact details in real-time?

Is there any facility to get reminders at the time of renewals in advance?

Checklist for Web Hosting (Web space)

Support is the most crucial point in case of hosting. One must check the response time in advance before selecting a service provider.

One must check the technical skills by putting few queries and watching their responses.

One must go though the Service Provider Website and make sure its professional looking with user-friendly navigation and layout.

One must check if they are having TESTIMONIALS listed, availability of listing of sites hosted with them, facility of discount for bulk purchases and payment modes.

One must be careful for the hidden charges as well and now above all one must check for the Bandwidth offered with the hosting plan.

The facility for Multiple Domains in single hosting space should be asked if not provided.

One must act carefully before selecting any hosting plan. One must check for availability of all the essential features like POP3 mails, SMTP support, FTP Account, Control Panel, Web mail, Spam Controller, Antivirus, and Web Statistics.

Checklist for Website Design

Is the website designer providing free minor updates or for a nominal fee on a yearly contract basis?

Is the look of the website professional and appealing to the global audience?

Check out for the listing of website in any of the search engine. To check one must put the website name on www.google.com. Does it show up anywhere in the results?

Does the website designer provides with monitoring service?

Does the website taking too much time to load. One must make care that it loads faster even on slow connections. One must keep in mind that success of website do not depends on Flashy animations, bigger size jpegs etc but on the Content. So stress on content of the website.

Many people heard saying “Penny-wise and Dollar-foolish”?

Choosing cheapest web hosting is not a good deal. If the user will only consider the money factor then he will have to regret later on as he will not get all the required facilities and the package he has chosen will then prove havoc.

If any user launches his website earlier in the “dark ages” of 1997 at that time he was charged $150 per month for hosting and data transfer charges. Then his web host keeps a close eye like an eagle over the number of files he uploads and always sends their heavily built invoices earlier with each passing month.

This is the claim not by just one person but by many people. Then suddenly a whole industry of “bargain” web hosts sprang up all over the web.

At that time cheap web hosting providers grows very rapidly as users welcome them very cheerfully. Now one can easily get the hosting facility by just spending $4.95 per month, as against $150 per month that he was paying for the same service earlier.

Just 5 bucks per month sounds really very interesting, until one realizes the amount of data transfer (number of page views) and bandwidth (the amount of data transfer his host allows in a 24 hour period) he gets for that cheap price harshly confines his capacity to do business.

This recognition – As soon as one recognized this fact as well as after understanding how data transfer and bandwidth gets calculated, one tends to recognize the disadvantages that he was suffering due to cheap price.

If any user exceeds the bandwidth limit allotted, then his bargain host will just shut down his site without any warning or else will send a huge bill.

Later on the webmasters who are truly professional realize that they’ve made a mistake by selecting a cheap host as their site suddenly gets shut down in the middle of a big promotion because of huge traffic. At that moment as one’s business is totally dependant on web site it seems like as if his whole business stops moving.

There are some cheap hosts providing good service, but one has to take utmost care and caution especially in the matter of bandwidth as it effects a lot afterwards when one’s business grows.

By just paying $24.95 per month one can get to host up to six independent websites with a single account. One gets unlimited data storage, unlimited email and a variety of other higher end services, but their bandwidth policy seems really hard to understand. So one should think again while hosting a bargain web host.

A dream of “big things” can be seen on a concrete platform only. Interconnection of Web Sites, that in the last one decade became appropriate for e-commerce, communications, special software etc. Now, that can be said as the first era of the Web Hosting Industry. However, the second era of Web Hosting was an applicable era consisting of new online platforms, with the traffic further shifted.

Within a small nick of time things like commerce, content and communications found their home on the Web. The shopping cart became the core of the online commerce, but in the current period of time a number of small traders (and some large ones) are selling their wares through the mediums like Amazon, Yahoo! or eBay etc. besides providing the transaction and the catalog technologies, they also bring the life giving blood of commerce: the customers. On the hosted stores from Amazon, Yahoo! or eBay, instantaneous access to a very huge number of customers from every part of the world is possible.

One can take the application-service-provider business model as the live example of several these new homes that were formerly hosted on one’s own server.

Everything is outscored, even the task of search build on several websites. There is existence of only few larger sites that requires implementing their own search, while others prefer Google.

One can say that, email is also an outscored function, like for example who does not employ Google’s Gmail or Yahoo!’s Mail, now their accounts are made up for free and one can have a whole gb for storage. User can imagine how many Web Hosting offers are provided to him/her with one GB per user, even for a fee. In a condition where the applications are moving out of the Web hosting data center, what can a Web host do?

What can a host offer to the customers?

Definitely, imminent can be the answer: “value migrates to adjacent layers” for this particular condition that value migrates to services. The Web Hosting vendors are constructing muscular businesses to survive though time.

Due to constant flexible nature of the Internet, the services that embrace, rather then compete with, the migration of services away from the Web Hosting data center is the key aspect. Clients that are helped to wander on gmail, or several big companies for e.g. Amazon, eBay or Yahoo!, will symbolize the crucial walk towards a progressive Web host.

However, the process of the migration is not a simple task, so an ideal host must help his/her clients by offering them free toolkits and libraries for the purpose to assist them in this overall migration process.

Thus through this one can see a glittering future of The Web Hosting Industry.

This article is useful for understanding the hosting industry and studies its dynamics to know what to look for before selecting a web host.

Firstly it is good to have a proper introduction of web hosting chain. It is termed as chain because here about 3 upstream providers serve the end consumer. First the web-hosting provider, who is in direct contact, then comes the web host’s upstream company who maintains the servers and sells space to web hosts, and above that, the data center that serves the purpose of providing the connection and houses the servers. There are some web hosts who act as the server administrator and liase with the data centers directly.

The growth of the web hosting industry in at saturation point due to the presence of hundreds of web-hosting providers claiming to provide cheaper and better services to businesses and individuals. The reason for this is the availability of resources in abundance and at cheaper costs with reducing disk space and data-transfer prices. Its easy to enter the web hosting business as there are large resellers of server space providing cheap hosting and reselling plans that provides ground to incomers to join the business.

Due to growing number of suppliers with cheaper reselling plans, more and more web hosting businesses are coming up providing web-hosting solutions to business and individual websites due to lower fixed costs and investment. Not only that this increase in supply is not caused by factors in any particular country. As Internet is not limited to the boundary of any country so the data centers present in any part of the world can easily provide the servers and web space for a local hosting company. Due to Internet it is easy to communicate to each other and providers can easily exchange their services in the global space.

Maintaining a proper balance between supply and demand is quite good for the customers. But imbalance has forced several new web-hosting providers to offer extremely low prices for their web hosting plans or packages in order to make them self stand in the tough market. Now it’s time for customers to choose the hosting providers having lowered prices from the vast number of providers.

However, continuous decrease in prices is quite disadvantageous for both the providers as well as the customers. By reduces prices, companies are able to earn nominal profit and are even not able to cover their support costs. Customers suffer by getting less support with their web-hosting accounts. It’s quite obvious if the profits do not justify the costs, web-hosting companies will easily close down and takes their clients’ sites with them.

The following are the factors to consider while choosing a web-hosting provider: -

The most important factor to consider is Support for any individual or small business looking for a web host for their websites. The Internet web-hosting provider who is unable to provide the facility of responding to emails within 24 hours is probably having problems providing fast and reliable support services. One can’t ignore the validity of these services especially for the beginners who needs guidance with publishing their websites on the web hosting account provided. The success of any web hosting business depends upon the relationships between web host and web hosting customers. To make business success, provider should be able to provide services when and where required also its crucial for customers to know when their site is going offline for sake of maintenance.

After support next important factor is Stability. It refers to how much uptime one can expect from the web-hosting provider, which in turn depends upon the providers’ servers and network. If the providers are not having reliable and stable providers, it would affect their servers and cause problems for the website. It is must to have an uptime of about 99.5% in the industry, as there are other external factors, which may be beyond control of the provider.

Third factor to consider is Cost which depends on the purpose of the website and budget. The budget may be smaller in case of Personal /Individual websites and so they opt to go with a cheaper web hosting provider, possibly in exchange for support and stability. But in case of business sites as they need better stability and support they opt for expensive host providers. It is most often observed that cheap web hosting providers are able to attract customers in the beginning by offering low prices but afterwards fails in providing quality support to their customers thereby creating problems for them. Also the large numbers of client sites cause sustained high server loads which leads to server crash thus hampering stability.

Another factor, which is not so important, is Location of the server. It is not considered important as it depends upon a user’s ISP/country’s connection to the data center where the server is located. Pings to the server normally tells the network latency to expect when people can access to one’s site. Lower ping rates leads to loading of site faster.

Last but not least one should take time to identify and contact a web host to check their service. This helps in providing an idea of the kind of support that one might receive and helps in deciding the reliability of the provider.