How-2-Host

Author: 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.

About the Author:

Searching for the best web hosting company? Find sales, deals and discounts from top web hosts as godaddy and hostgator

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Basic Concepts of Web Hosts

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As a hosting provider there are services your clients will expect from you and as a hosting provider you should expect to provide these services.  Remember, there are thousands of other hosting providers out there.  Customer service matters and when the customer needs your help, you should always be there.

 

Recently I had client come to me asking if I could help him move his SQL database from another hosting server to mine.  As his host I felt that this was part of my job description and my duty to help him with this move so naturally I said of course.

 

During the transfer I ran into two issues.  One, the server his SQL resided on was setup for SQL 5.0 while I was running version 4.0.  The second issue was the sheer size of the db.  There were 99 tables which is resonable bad but one of the tables was 300 mb’s in size alone making it hard to import.

 

Road Block 1: How do you move SQL5.0 to SQL4.0?

When I ran into the version issue I spoke with my server management team who informed me of the risk in performing an upgrade on the SQL since I have other clients on the server.  I continued to research with google and try different exports with no avail until I noticed the ‘SQL compatibility mode ’ which has a setting for ‘MYSQL40’.  I ran a few tables as a test and it worked like a charm!

                                      Road Block 1: Passed

 

Now that I could export the database in a 4.0 format I could easily import it right?!?  Wrong.

 

Road Block 2: How do you import a db that is too big?

I have always been fortunate enough to be able to do all my db within myphpadmin which makes life easy but not this time.  You see, myphpadmin only accepts import files of 51mg’s.  This is 1/6th of the size of a table.

 

Back to google.

 

After a few hours of searching I came to http://www.ozerov.de/bigdump.php.  Big Dump is a script that executes only a small part of the SQL export and then restarts itself to import the next segment.

 

This tool worked like a dream, so much in fact it has crossed my mind to donate a few bucks to the authors of it.  All you have to do is upload the bigdump.php file and the gzip SQL export into the same directory, then edit the bigdump.php file to your db settings.  Once you have to complete just go to your website and view the php file, click the link and off it goes!

Road Block 2: Passed

 

At first I was trying to use a zip file since the compressions seemed smaller but that was unsuccessful and I ended up exporting it into the gzip file.

 

Hope this helps anyone having to move an SQL db.

 

 

 

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Today I spent the afternoon at the Syracuse Chamber of Commerce show where I worked a booth for my “day job”. After spending the day there I realize that I should write a blog about a very important part of business, of all businesses, social networking.

At the chamber show there were booths ranging from home improvement to local banks. There were SEO companies, restaurants, technology based companies, and cell phone companies. All there with the same purpose and for the most part the same strategy of networking.

From my study of the folks at the show here is how it works and why it works. First of all, everyone there for the most part was a member of the Chamber and they all had a booth. Second, each booth would send sales people out to go around to other booths and repeat a pretty simple pitch.

“Hi Marty”, (everyone had name tags), “What do you and your company do?”

That’s it! With that simple question people would share what they do and why they do it. Then the wandering rep would just have to decide if THEY could help that booth with their business. I couldn’t believe it! I would think that your booth was set up to draw business while in reality the booth was just a place for others to pitch their service to you!

While wandering myself I spoke with a few local companies that perform SEO services and web services more or less to see what others in my industry where up to but I noticed the real use of the selling to booth strategy when I walked up to a booth that stages homes before sale.

As a strategic person I understand the importance of staging a home and I am planning on selling my house in the next 5 years so I approached the TBJ Home Staging Impressions booth. As I chatted with Gayle she told me that this is a new adventure for her and that she was having a website created as we speak. CHA-CHING! Now she was talking my language and I knew how I could help her. I explained that I am into that type of work and that I offer web hosting all the while I grabbed one of her business cards and slipped it into my wallet right next to my own business card which I handed to her.

Now, I might not hear from Gayle about hosting but the importance of networking is still there. I may need to stage my house and I only know one person who does that and she may need to host her site still, where I am sure I will be fresh on her mind.

Think of networking like lottery tickets. The more tickets you pick up the greater chance you will have of winning! Even though the chance is minimal, the reward is worth it.

Join online social groups, go to shows and conferences, and talk to anyone that will listen. You’re only helping your business when you do!

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Revenue - Cost = Profit

This is what it all comes down to.  How much are we going to make?  First step is figuring out how much each package cost us.  We will base the examples on the last two articles, Packages: Basic Coverage and Packages: Selling Points.

Lets say our reseller package cost us $40 a month and we have 600 gb of bandwidth to offer.  To calculate each plans basic cost we need to figure out how many accounts we can get on the server for each plan.  Keep in mind that this strategy of planning is based on a maxed out server.  You can figure you current cost per plan by supplementing the max for the current number of clients.  To figure out how many people we can place on a server we take the bandwidth that we have and divide it by the bandwidth we offer with an account.  For example, plan 1 is 10 gb per account and we have 600 gb’s to use for a total of 60 possible accounts. Then all we have to divide the number of possible accounts by our cost of $40.  This gives us our basic cost.

Now we have our basic cost which ranges from $0.67-$10.00 a month but we still need to add in our selling points that cost us a little extra.  Some of our selling points don’t actually cost us anything and come as part of a package.  We don’t have to worry about these at this point, only the selling points that add to our total cost.

Now lets say I spent $800 a month on 25 million impressions from 1800banners.com.  That would make my cost for 25,000 impressions $0.80, 50k impressions = $1.60, and 100k impressions = $3.20.

That just leaves us with the free domain name ($10 a year / 12 = $0.84 a month) and the custom name servers which will cost us $2 a month or $24 annually.  Here are the cost for each plan with just the selling points added in.

PLAN 1 - $0.80

PLAN 2 - $1.60

PLAN 3 - $6.04

That makes our total cost per plan $1.47, $4.93, and $16.04 respectively.

How much do I sell my product for?

This part is really up to you.  How much do you want to make?  For this example we are going to go somewhere in the middle of the road. For each month the revenue from each package will be $3, $10, and $25 however I will provide the example below based on annual numbers.

Cost	Plan 1	Plan 2	Plan 3
Basic Coverage	$8.04	$39.96	$120.00
Selling Points	$9.60	$19.20	$72.48
Total	$17.64	$59.16	$192.48
Selling Price (mo/year)	$3/$36	$10/$120	$25/$300
Profit per account	$18.36	$60.84	$107.52

Hope this has been helpful!

DJL

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There is going to be a virtual conference June 1st - 26^th of this year. For anyone in the web hosting industry this is something that you should think about attending. Seats are free and said to be limited, go here and sign up!

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 Welcome to post 3 of our “What’s in a Package” segment. If you haven’t read the other two post yet the are always available at http://how-2-host.com/2009/03/20/whats-in-a-package/ and http://how-2-host.com/2009/03/21/packages-basic-coverage/

This section is going to deal with selling points and perks. What distinguishes your hosting offer against all the others? Some hosting companies offer perks to help them sell the packages such as free domain names or even vouchers for Googles Adwords. These are selling points. They are used to intrigue the prospective client and they give the prospect a reason to choose you over someone else. They also help to build value to your product.

How do you get perks that others don’t have? Well first, think about what you would want if you were the client.  What would push you over the edge to buy?

On this site we sell reseller packages for people who want to offer web hosting as a business. When I was setting up the idea in my head I asked myself one simple question, “What did I want when I was starting out?” The first and quickest answer was traffic!

I had a site and I was offering hosting space but no one knew who I was or how to find me. At first I thought I would try Google Adwords to advertise my site until I saw that it would run me around $7-12 a click to have my site at the top of the list. This would have been fine since but the only issue is I could only afford 2 clicks a month on my budget and I knew that wouldn’t get me very far so I started looking into some other options.

That’s when I discovered 1800banners.com where I purchased 250,000 banner impressions plus the right to direct what kind of sites my banner was shown on for only $20. This was perfect for me! Within a month I was getting a few hundred hits a month. Mission accomplished!

 

So, I wanted to give free banner impressions with each month of service as a perk. If you go to 1800banners.com you will see that for me to give away 25,000 impressions I would have to spend $3.95 per client… now if I had 1,000 clients at $4 each it would cost me $4000 a month just to offer this as a selling point, not very cost efficient however I can purchase 25,000,000 imps for $800 saving myself $3200 a month, now its worth it! I don’t actually have 1000 clients but if I did and I had the funds I could probably go to them with a proposal such as, “Hey, I need 25 million impressions every month… can I buy 6 months worth for 4 months worth of cost?” And I might be able to get a better deal.

With that being said, what do you need to offer a perk? You need money, clients, and/or contacts. That’s all that is going to matter to the company you partner with, who do you know, how much do you have to spend and how much do you need. I have heard to offer Google Adwords you just need to submit a business proposal but I imagine that you will need an impressive client base and sign up rate to get anywhere.

Some other perks I have seen offered include free domain names, Adword vouchers, accounts with domain registrars, free months of hosting with x amount paid upfront, custom name servers, and so on. Pretty much anything you can get a deal on and offer to your clients can be a perk.

Selling points are important because anyone can offer hosting space and great customer service. When you offer perks you show that you are serious about what you do and you will work hard to bring the best to your clients. It also builds value to your package, value obviously will play a big role in our next segment, “Packages: R-C=P” (Revenue – Cost = Profit)

That’s all I have for now but look for the next and final piece later this week!

Be easy!

 

DJL

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This section covers the standard features a client will expect from a host although they may not all be offered by every hosting company.  The only two features a host really has to offer is disk space and bandwidth however there are some common features offered nearly across the board and are usually sought after by prospective clients.  Some of the features are control panels, cgi, php, MySql, script packages, stat trackers, email, spam filters, ect.

As we talk about each item we will talk about how we are going to space them apart from the other two plans.  When I design a package I look at many angles and as I step through the process of Revenue-Cost=Profit (R-C=P) I tend to rearrange them to better fit our budget of space and dollar.  My main goal when setting up my packages is to remember one rule for each one.

Package 1: Give them less then they need.

The reason you want to give them less is because this package is more of a way to save a prospect instead of losing them to the next in line.  Maybe package #2 is out of this prospects range but package #1 isn’t, the prospect signs up for two reasons.  One, he knows he can always upgrade with you since they are at a lower level and two, because he is already on your site.  You see, most people don’t want to do the research and instead they go by what  they see.  “Package 2 is too much for me but package 1 is really affordable, good enough for me!”.

Package 2: Suitable for nearly anyone, fair and honest.

This package is my pride and joy.  It will generally offer all of my basic coverage at a level that should take care of anyone.  Plenty of space, extra scripts, a control panels, and plenty of other goodies.  I will also make this package affordable or at least comparable to competitors.  This package will ideally work for anyone looking for web space.

Package 3: Over do it!

I mean it, really overload this package.  You’ll have to charge an arm and a leg to pay for it but is someone really needs more then package 2 and they are willing to pay the big bucks, let em!  You’ll find in the R-C=P section that package’s of this kind can really turn a profit though they are less common then package 1 and 2.

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Disk Space

This is the amount of space the client can store on your server.  Even a decent size site takes up less the a gig of disk space and 5 gigs is plenty so there are my first two packages.  The third one remember is more then they should need.  This is nice because usually won’t use it all, its like selling something that someone never picks up but they pay you again the next month for it again.  We will give the third package 3x more then the 2nd making it 15 gigs of disk space!

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Bandwidth Space

Bandwidth is a little trickier, this all depends on how big your site is and how many people visit you.  Every time an image loads on a visitors screen that eats off your bandwidth.  Bandwidth is the measurement of downloaded files from your server.  If you have an image on your site that is 500k and you have 10,000 people visit your site and that image loads, you have used 5 gig’s of bandwidth right there.  Now imagine you have 10 of those images on your site!  I figured 10x the amount of disk space for each package should suffice making it 10 gb for plan 1, 50 gb for plan 2 and 150 gb for plan 3.

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Control Panels

Good ol’ FTPing isn’t for many these days since the implementation of the control panel which makes it simple to do things like upload files, organize mailing list and accounts, set up FTP accounts, show stats of the server and space used.  The list goes on and on.  Control panels have made much of publishing a website simple as well as more powerful.  This is a must have tool in my opinion and you will not find many clients without it.  Some of the bigger name control panels that are out there are cPanel and Plesk.  I am familiar with cPanel so you will hear me reference that one often however they are both very good tools for a webmaster.

With that being said, I will offer cPanel with every account regardless of package type.

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E-Mail

Everyone that has a domain name  should have an email with it.  Personally I find it unprofessional for someone to use a google or hotmail account for business when they have custom email they can use.

For package 1 we will give them one email account. Package 2 we will give 25 accounts.  That should be plenty for most sites but package 3 we want to over do so we will allow 500 to make it look impressive.

Chances are good the package 3 will never use even a 10th of the emails but it doesn’t hurt us to give them that many.

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Databases

This is the feature that we will use to really add the value to package 2 over package 1.  Databases are used for almost any script whether its a shopping cart script, forum, blog, php game, they all require databases and sometimes more then 1.  A database is where all the information added is stored and then the website calls in the parts they need.

Almost any script will need a database so we are not going to give package 1 any databases.  This will give them only one option if they want to implement any really nice scripts… upgrade! Good for us right?

Package 2 will get up to two databases if they need it and package 3 will get more then they need once again.  We will give them 10.

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Where we are at…

So we have covered disk space, bandwidth, control panels, email, and databases.  Lets see where our packages are at now.

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FEATURES	Package 1	Package 2	Package 3
cPanel	Yes	Yes	Yes
Storage	1 gb	5 gb	15 gb
Bandwidth	10 gb	50 gb	150 gb
Email	1 account	25 accounts	500 accounts
SQL Database	0 databases	2 databases	10 databases

So far so good?  Good because that bring us to the end of Packages: Basic Coverage but keep an eye out for the next segment, Packages: Selling Points, for tips on what to add to your package to increase value.

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Thanks for reading,

DJL

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A Package is the product you are going to see to your potential clients.  It is a makeup of space, scripts, tools, and other perks all rolled into one package. Most host offer multiple types of hosting with a few packages for each one.  This makes it very important to know what people are going to expect and how much they are willing to pay for it when setting these plans up.  For the sake of example this article will set up 3 shared hosting accounts on paper.

There are two ways to look at packages, it just depends on what side of the fence you’re standing on.  On one side there is a farmer with the seeds and tools while on the other side there is beautiful green grass and fertile land just waiting for someone to grow a website.

So this post will focus on the farmer since that is what I hope all of you are!

 The Farmer.  As the farmer it is your job to provide the tools and the know-how so that your prospects choose you over the competition and if there is one thing the hosting business isn’t short on its competition!

There are 3 major factors to conceder when creating your packages.

Basic coverage

What is a standard plan? What will your clients need?

Selling points

Why should the prospect choose you over someone else?

R-C=P

Revenue-Cost=Profit

As I was writing this blog I realised it was exteamly long and poorly written so I have decided to make this a to be continued series.  There will be three more articles pertaining to this (Packages: Basic Coverage, Packages: Selling Points, and Packages: R-C=P).  These articles will deal with each topic more indepth then I would be able to do here.

Thank you.

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A lot of banner exchanges have died out over the past decade, including some large banner exchanges such as Bcentral.
In the past, I have personally signed up and tested almost every known banner and ad exchange that exists on the web.

Here are what I have learned from that experience:

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Coming Soon!

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