Best Options is cPanel Web Hosting

You know when I am looking for web hosting; I am looking for a number of things. The first thing I want to see from my chosen web host is more value for my money. We all know that hosting is not the cheapest thing in the world.

Well I know that is true if I want quality hosting, but many web hosts offer very little to justify any type of cost. Therefore, I want features that will allow me to make the most out of my money and offer my customers more for their money as well. cPanel does this for me. I have the ability to use one product, which carries so many different features, which enables me to provide the very best to my customers.

I am also looking for ease in use. I certainly do not want to use a host that will require me to take classes just on how to use the software or management center. I need a host that allows me to easily manage every aspect of my website in an easy to use manner. cPanel can offer me this with its easy to use format that is quick and easy to understand.

In the internet world today, customers expect a lot of benefits and options. This is something I have to give my customers if I expect them to come aboard with my business. This means that I need to have the ability to offer my customers unlimited possibilities. With all the different operating systems available, I want to make sure that my customer's needs are well taken care of, with cPanel, I can do just that.

One absolute must is automation. Without automation, my job is that much harder. The whole point in creating an interest business is that the internet makes the world an easier place to shop, learn, and provide service to surfers. I want a host that offers me solutions or lets me use my own. I need a host, like cPanel, that allows me to make use of any number of business tools to help my business succeed.

With that being said, just as offered with cPanel, I will need a flexible hosting package. I need to be able to add features, delete features, and customize my customers viewing and shopping experience as needed. I have a custom application that I am looking to use within my business; the host must have support capabilities to integrate the application.

Lastly, my host needs to keep me abreast on how my account and server is working. If there are any problems with my account, I want to know. cPanel, sends me emails or messages via an instant message program or even through my cell phone if there are any issues with services, my account, or server. This is important, because I do not always have the time to log into the website to check the status. With these messages, I can always be sure that everything is running smoothly.

What Are those Web Hosting Affiliate Programms

The Internet or World Wide Web is one giant interwoven collection of websites. These websites are hosted on servers on computers round the globe, using their hosting capabilities to display each website's files that contain text, HTML, XML, PHP and / or some other source code, images, graphics, audio and video files and more. And those who offer hosting solutions generally offer a variety of business opportunities with plenty of money-making potential like web hosting affiliate programs and business hosting.

Web Hosting Affiliate Program

When a hosting provider sets up a web hosting affiliate program, those who sell the hosting to others through their affiliate link can earn a profit for their sales effort, generally a monthly fee, based upon the percentage of the sale.

For example, you can host your website with a affiliate hosting company and once you sign up, you are able to participate in their affiliate program. Add an affiliate link, a link to the site with your affiliate code embedded in it, so that any sales ring up under your own account ID. Once sales occur, you receive residual income for each month your referral remains a regular paying customer.

Set up your own website about the importance of web hosting and how to go about it, then promote it using your affiliate links in everything. Then you'll have a small business with your web hosting affiliate program, earning you extra dollars every month.

Business Web Hosting

There is more than one type of hosting out there. You can get small 1-page sites and web hosting packages for sites growing up like individual sites, medium-sized and large-sized sites, business web hosting with all the bells and whistles - and about any type of hosting in between. Usually difference in web hosting packages involves the main features like the disk space, bandwidth and monthly price you pay. But equally important to many are the number of domains you can host, sub domains, FTP accounts you can have, whether or not Fantastico modules are present offering a lot of extra tools and scripts for web builders (like Help Desks, Content Management solutions and much more).

In order to choose the best business hosting package for your needs, start by asking for hosting referrals form fellow business associates. Then compare what each has to offer, comparing offerings to what your own business hosting needs are. Then allow some room to grow and choose accordingly, selecting a plan that fits your budget and offers plenty of support.

Benifits you will get from Web Hosting Forums

If you are a website owner, learning about web hosting services is always useful. No matter what time of business are you running and how large it is, a reliable web hosting provider is an important factor in developing it and increasing your revenue.

A web hosting forum is a discussion board on the Internet on web hosting related issues. It is a place where you can look over reviews of different web hosting services, check listings of the best-rated providers, read web hosting related news and post questions related to web hosting. If you are interested in web hosting, a web hosting forum can help you in many ways.

Check ratings

If you want to build a website and you need a web host, you have to decide between the hundreds of services available. If you are a newbie in web hosting, you may not know where to start your search. The top host listing on a web hosting forum is always a great starting point.

Read reviews

Some of the web hosting forum members have done some research on many web hosting providers and can offer useful information. If you have a list of a few potential hosts, reading some reviews of their services can be very useful. You can find out information that is not available on their website, especially if it refers to the pitfalls of the services they are offering.

Check discussion threads

Members in a web hosting forum get involved in discussions on several topics. You can browse discussion threads on a certain topic that is of interest to you. You can also find comparisons between different web hosting services, which can help you make a better decision on which provider would suit your needs best.

Post questions

Some of the members of web hosting forums are very experienced in this field and can provide answers to your questions related to web hosting. Just make sure you explain the problem clearly in order to improve your chances of getting appropriate answers.

Read the news

Web hosting forum members usually share a special interest in this field. The whole purpose of a forum is sharing the information with others. When a member finds out interesting news about web hosting or learns about a new service that has been launched, he usually posts an announcement on the forum so that others can learn about it too.

Meet people

Web hosting forums are a great place to meet experts not only in web hosting, but in other areas related to online businesses as well. This is a great opportunity to get some useful advice from people who are more experienced in a certain field and are willing to share their experience with others.

Forums are better than other sources of information, such as e-books or articles, because they are more dynamic and allow you to get answers to your specific questions. You can get involved in a forum too, share your knowledge and experience with others and be part of a virtual community.

Critical Factors for succeeding in Business Web Hosting

There are a number of business web hosting services over the internet. It is important to choose a business web hosting service that caters to your needs. Do you require a business web hosting that is a dedicated server, a managed server, or a shared server? A business website could be very simple or complicated depending on the entity. The business could sell one product and may only require a simple e-commerce site or a very complex pay per click engine with complete statistics and payment features.

There are a nearly thousands of business web hosting services you can find online. These business hosting sites offer a number of features. Some may be unfamiliar to you such as Miva Scripting, co-location services, virtual private servers, redundant backbone connections and many others. You must define your aim. Ask why do you need a business web hosting company? This way you will only look for the services that you truly need for your business web hosting. You will not end up paying for the services that you do not actually need.

A business web hosting site can range from $40 - $50 a month to thousands of dollars. The price range will usually depend on the dedicated servers and bandwidth capacity. Choosing a business web hosting service is a major consideration. This is because down time usually means your business is down too.

You must consider a number of factors before committing to a business web hosting service. One factor is a business web hosting service must offer a money back, no questions guarantee. Another is an uptime guarantee. You should also consider the types of backups they offer. A business web hosting service should have redundant backbone connections to the internet or connected to the internet by more than one major backbone providers. A business web hosting service must offer 24/7 technical, phone, and email support. You should also check the background of the web hosting service; how long have they been in business and do they have business references of sites that they host. Also, a web hosting vendor should also make it easy for you to upgrade/down services. And finally, know if the web hosting service requires monthly or annual payments.

Choosing the right business web hosting service is essential for your business to grow. Your web hosting service may spell the difference between success and failure in your business. That is why great care should be exercised in choosing one.

Everything about Shared Web Hosting

After designing of website next important thing is to get it hosted on the internet. The task is not at easy as there are so many companies offering various types of web hosting packages like shared web hosting, dedicated web hosting, managed web hosting etc. Now the problem is which one to use?

In general it is considered a good idea to go for shared web hosting if the user is in a small business and wants to save cost. However before finalizing the deal it is good to know what is shared web hosting service and what are the merits and demerits of shared web hosting.

Defining shared hosting:

If extremely high performance and high bandwidth are not the points in question, then shared web hosting service can be a most convenient and economic way of hosting web sites.. As name implies, in case of shared web hosting service, the web server that hosts the web pages is shared by several other websites. Talking about number of websites on a shared hosting server, they can be in thousands. Now due to the fact that just one server is fulfilling the requirements of many other websites, the plus point is they can offer cheap prices for their server.

As there are so many websites hosted on a single web server, still there is no pint of worry for the user as the web hosting providers will not compromise on any kind of security and performance issues in case of shared hosting servers. Not only that, shared hosting web servers are operated, monitored and look after around the clock by IT professionals, so as to minimize server downtimes.

Shared hosting servers run on UNIX or other multi-user operating system and each website hosted on the web server is provided a separate account in the operating system. These websites hosted on shared servers are provided unique shared IP addresses and are provided with a fix amount of web resources.

The following are some of the merits and demerits of shared web hosting:

Merits:

1. Cost effective: Due to the fact that many websites are hosted on a single web server, web hosting providers provide economic shared web hosting services. Generally, the cost is as low as $5-10 per month for shared web hosting services. Now-a-days due to cut throat competition in web hosting industry, one can find several web hosting companies offering huge web space and bandwidth with as high as 1000 MB disk space and 40 GB bandwidth.

2. Feasible: Due to the fact that shared hosting web servers are operated, monitored and look after around the clock by IT professionals, who are experts in their respective field, one can concentrate more effectively on his/her web business and the problem of downtime and maintenance will not bother him/her any more.

3. Utility options: In case of shared web hosting, though web resources are shared, utility options are provided by the hosting company so that user can manage his/her website using control panel or similar tools. User is having an option to upload files, modify /remove web pages, add database, check web statistic etc. Not only that, user is also provided facility to create domain name specific e-mails accounts.

4. Efficient: Now-a-days shared web hosting service usually comes with web space and bandwidth that are more than sufficient for small business websites. Efficiency lies in the fact, that in addition to above, one can add more resources and can even overrun the web space or bandwidth usage.

Demerits:

1. Problem with response time: As the web server is shared, websites in the shared web hosting have to face problem of slower server response time as compared to dedicate server hosting.

2. Problem of Reliability: In case of shared web hosting, problem of reliability remains as usually web hosting providers may take care of the security and performance of the shared server but it is also possible that some of websites hosted on the shared server run a nasty program or script or over-utilize the resources, resulting in bringing down the web server. Thus due to fault of one all websites have to suffer downtimes and inaccessibility in case of shared web hosting.

3. Problems related to sharing: As discussed above also, due to fault of one all users have to face the problem for example if there is any one "bad" website in shared web server, due to it all websites on the server can be banned altogether by ISP or search engine due to shared IP address. However it is worth to note that one can always pay extra to get a dedicated IP address to avoid the above problem.

4. Problems related to Security: As many websites shared one server, problem of security always remains in case of shared web hosting as it is quite easy to hack one’s sensitive datas by another on the same server.

Thus in conclusion it can be said that before deciding to deal with shared web hosting, one should consider all the merits and demerits of shared web hosting as highlighted above. One should not forget the success of his/her business depends upon his/her website which in turn depends upon good host provider.

Need to Keep in mind before selection Web Host

After the registration of domain name selection of web host is another rational step a user need to consider. Though, finding an ideal host is a daunting task. One can find several companies offering web-hosting services to the clients. While locating keyword web hosting in the search engines one will find more than 100 million outputs!

One cannot deny the fact, for a successful online presence a dependable web hosting is must. Online presence and accessibility of a web site is must. If not, one should remain ready to loose clients and prospects. For an instance, if one compare this with a traditional business.

CATEGORIES OF WEB HOSTING:

One should select a web hosting deal according to his/her site. One cannot fulfill his/her requirements from same hosting deal for a personal web site, web site meant for email newsletter subscription and archives, e-commerce site or web forum. Web hosting can be divided into four prime categories:

1. Virtual (shared) hosting,

2. Dedicated server,

3. Collocation server and

4. Reseller hosting.

Two most applicable hosting are virtual (shared) hosting and dedicated server.

What is Virtual (shared) hosting? It is a condition in which several web sites share one server. It is a low cost hosting because price is divided between several users. One can locate a standard virtual hosting at a rate of $100 a year.

In a Dedicated server hosting company lease the whole web server from a particular web hosting company. The site of web server is the web hosting company. One can opt dedicated server as a suitable option who does not wish to share a server with other web masters. One can find a dedicated server in two forms managed and un-managed. If one talk about managed server, company will take care of all the setups of user’s server. However, in unmanaged server user needs to take care of all these by him/her self. The benefit of this sort of hosting is that one can fully lodge web hosting as per his/her requirements. Moreover, for a site with ample amount of visitors a dedicated server is the only rational choice. Due to higher cost, starting from $100 per month, those companies that know the worth of Internet business generally use it.

One can say that Collocation server is quite identical to dedicated server. Disparity lies in the fact that company doesn’t take the web server on lease. Their own web server is placed in the web hosting company. In addition to it, company has material access to their web server, which is not available while talking about a dedicated server.

If one mention about Reseller hosting it is aimed to those companies only wishes to begin their own web hosting business.

ASPECTS, WHICH ONE NEEDS TO CONSIDER:

There are many factors which a user needs to consider to prevent any future miss happens:

Web space:
Requirement of Web space vary from site to site. Off course, if user requirement is only a web site containing basic information about him/her and his/her work excluding the use of web applications, then space of 50 MB is quite sufficient. However, a complex e-commerce site along with numerous products in one’s database demands a capacity of 1 GB.

Bandwidth:
The term Bandwidth refers to data transferred from user’s web site and that comprise of graphic details, images, banners and files for download. One should have accurate knowledge of Content before going for an amount of bandwidth. When one talks about the majority of sites, bandwidth of 10 GB a month is quite sufficient, though for few other sites like sites related to desktop wallpapers can frequently consumes even hundreds of GB a month.

Up time or visibility:
It symbolizes time articulated in percents displaying the period a site remained online. One should not be cheerful because someone assured him/her to provide say for 98% up time because it is not going to fulfill his/her requirement. One should get at least 99.7% uptime. Believe it or not, it definitely matters.

Email accounts:
Email accounts are an integrated and crucial part of web hosting package. It is quite interesting to know for how much will one get only a so called catch –all forwarding which means that all emails sent to somewhere@mydomain.com will arrive to one’s email address or one can set-up email accounts for several users? Also the thing is for how much? Is it intended for 5, 10, 100 or limitless email accounts? In addition to it, there is no harm to verify whether user get a so-called POP3 email address (“real” email address), web mail or rather both? If one has a POP3 email address then he/she can check his/her emails via favorite email client and web mail facilitate the user to inquire his/her emails at any place demanding just a computer and Internet connection.

Form of Server, tools and control panel:
When one mention the two generally utilized hosting then the name of Unix-based or Windows platform comes first. It matters for the result program languages, databases and scripts that one can apply. When one talks about Unix-based platform, general selection is relayed to PHP language along with MySQL, however, when it comes to Windows platform ASP or ASP.NET language will be along with SQL Server. One should enquire that is database is available with package or not, if yes, then how many? Nowadays, contemporary web site must be database-driven.

Too, one should have full knowledge related to tools coming along with web hosting package, if there is only applications for web statistics, file manager and things it is not an concern issue.

Technical support:

A crucial aspect while selecting a web hosting particularly for a user without having adequate technical skills is technical support. A proper technical support does not take a responsive time more then a day. This is not liable only to selection of web hosting company, but, crucial to any of the company selling products and services, Software Company can be one of the examples.

The coordination of few of the companies is so well thought-out that it takes only 1 hour to give response to user’s queries! Through their source of contact one can predict about the future response. Do the concern company has only email support or also have phone support? Does they provide a toll-free number? Do they offer the facility of trouble-ticket system? Working time is another crucial aspect. What is their strategy of providing technical support is it during working hours only i.e. 9 to 17 or does they provide the facility of 24x7 technical support? An ideal way to detect their professionalism one can create a list of fake queries, drop a line to them and hang around to know their reply time.

Testimonials:

Several web hosting and software companies have this smart way to increase their customer strength. Testimonials section contains the approval of satisfied customers, attracting more people to their service. This section is not completely reliable. Several hosting companies offer their clients to analyze their portfolio, instead of doing that one should contact webmasters who are taking the service of concern host and register their opinions. One can take help of several sites for further information regarding best web hosting deals and suggestions.

Web Hosting Technical Terms Explanation

Almost every one has the knowledge of present internet scenario! How fast it is!!? A bud of web pages nurture to trillions of pages on the Internet, providing several hosting plans to choose from under which comes affordable web hosting, Cheap Web hosting, ASP Web Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated Servers, eCommerce Hosting, FrontPage Web Hosting, Hosting With Templates, Managed Web Hosting, PHP Web Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting, Unix / Linux Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, Windows Hosting, Co-location Hosting and few others.

Above mentioned are the few web hosting terms which reflects several faces of web hosting. The entire highlighted web hosting plans and terminologies can be categorized in terms of cost, programming languages, operation systems, Web servers, and functionality.

Broad description is given below:

1. Cost:

Web hosting plans are mentioned and divided between affordable web hosting, budget hosting and cheap web hosting. Cost of web hosting is the prime aspect that several small budget site holders are looking for. On displaying the cost of Affordable web hosting, budget hosting or cheap web hosting plan one will come to know that it is less than $5 a month.

2. Programming Languages:

When a user wants to make his/her site dynamic and interactive, he/she should search for hosting plans that support the programming languages that user have command over. Usually applicable languages are PHP, ASP, JSP, PERL etc. Hosting plans assisting such programming languages are called PHP Web hosting, ASP Web hosting, JSP Web hosting or PERL Web hosting.

3. Operating Systems:

After selecting suitable programming language(s), user still has sovereignty to choose the operating system that can host the concern websites. Moreover, as everybody that ASP is restricted to Microsoft Windows, further programming languages, PHP, JSP and PERL; work not only on Windows, but also on UNIX and Linux. Hosting plans assisting particular operating system is termed as Window Hosting, UNIX hosting or rather Linux hosting.

4. Web Servers:

Talking about web servers, Apache is the most widely supported Web server in Web hosting industry. It operates only on Microsoft Internet Information Server or IIS server. For JSP hosting, Web logic or Web sphere is the main requirement. When ever there is any discussion related to Web servers, the main attraction is server performance. There are several solutions available like Managed Web Hosting, Shared Hosting, Dedicated Servers, or Virtual Private Servers (VPS). Out of these shared hosting is the cheapest plan, and one can host as many sites as he/she likes with a Reseller Hosting option. The cost of VPS is just $50 a month, and Dedicated Server plan costs from $50 - $100 or more per month depending upon storage space and bandwidth of the hosting plan.

5. Functionality:

In the market, one can find several hosting plans which either makes the site creation simple or rather offer assistance for the protection of online transactions. Creating a simple website can be a game of certain hours if the hosting plan selected by user supports assorted templates.

Thus on the hope that this article will definitely serve its users we wish best of luck.

How To Protect Your Hosting Account From Spam Complaints

There has been a recent epidemic of spam in the world of internet marketing. That is there have been many occurrences of unsolicited email being sent bombarding people with offers and supposed money making opportunities. It has created a lot of problems for many of the world’s email users and there have been countless numbers of complaints.

The trouble with this is that it has put people on guard and there are some genuine emails that get misconstrued for being spam. Then the sender gets in trouble for having sent the email when there was nothing wrong done. You may right now be wondering exactly what this has to do with your hosting account. Well keep on reading and you just may find out!

Before you sign up with a web hosting company you want to make sure you get some feedback from other internet marketers that use that same service. You want to listen to them because they will be using their websites in the same way that you most likely will be doing; that is building a powerful opt-in list.

What you want to ascertain from these fellow marketers is how this hosting company deals with spam complaints. You can get these opinions by going to some well-known online forums where internet marketers regularly meet and discuss matters. Some good ones are those such as Warrior Forum and The Rich Jerk Forum. You want to make sure that the web hosting company deals with spam complaints in a responsible and fair manner.

The worst scenario is to have a web hosting company that flies off the handle at even the slightest complaints and suspends your account completely. You must avoid this at all costs and while it may take a bit of extra time in the beginning you will definitely be glad you did it in thelong term.

When building your list you must make sure that you take a couple of measures that will serve to convince your web hosting company that you are a genuine, honest email market in the event that some hoax spam complaints occur. One of these measures is to have a double opt-in Autosponder. This means that after signing up to your list the person will then have to confirm that they want to receive your course and future updates.

The other important measure to implement is to make sure that every single email that you send out to your list has an obvious unsubscribe link which they can click on and automatically be unsubscribed from your list. By doing these two things your hosting company will be far less likely to act in haste and shut down your account and this will help to safeguard your business.

Primary Things for Web Hosting

The one who wants to enter in this web world and desires for a long time survival, then he/she should be familiar with each and every terminology used in this field. If user considers all the important factors before choosing a hosting plan then only he/she will be able to have a successful future in this world .User should not choose any of the plan, rather he/she should opt the best and most suitable one and this can only be made possible by fetching more and more informations and also by studying properly all the requirements. New comers should start from the basics .They should learn the meaning of each and every term used and also in addition those factors that can affect his/her selection.

Web Host

Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as ‘web server’. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.
The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.

There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:

1. Free Hosts:

The users who are not professional but are making website only as a hobby then for them free hosting can be a good option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the user’s domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.

2. Shared Hosts:

The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility. No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.

3. Dedicated Hosts:

The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to create as many websites as they like. Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.

4. Collocated Hosts:

Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.

5. Reseller Hosts:

In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.

6. Other Hosts:

Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.

Domain Name

Domain name is the name which shows the place where one’s website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is easier than recalling the IP addresses.

Space / Storage

Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very important role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases. Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month can be easily available.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who don’t want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.

Server Type

Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.

Databases

As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.
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Server Side Scripting

Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmaster’s requirements. However PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.

Email

Now the next very important aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can move further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is planning to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts totally depends on the hosting plan one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as big plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.

Control Panel

Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some important functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.

Uptime

Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with excellent features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will think twice before visiting it. In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very important feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.

Price

Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a great variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices ranging from 0 to $1000 per month. For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterwards.