http://articles.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com/rss.xml A blog about lowcostwebhostingpackages.com daily 365 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://articles.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com/?a=35116 <p>by Gregg Hall</p><p>The type of web site you have or intend to build will decide very much what web hosting company you end up choosing. The reason for this is that the level of storage, bandwidth, and other services differs greatly amongst all the various web hosting companies available. <br /><br />If you are going to have a simple web site with only a few pages and very little graphics then you will be able to get by with a web host that offers entry level hosting packages. Bear in mind that even though there may be free services out there for a few dollars a month you are better off with your own hosting without their required advertising on your site.<br /><br />Now on the other side of the coin, if you are going to have a web site that is more of an e-commerce or business web site or have one that hosts streaming music or video then you will want one that will allow much more features and scripts. The company will need to provide database support and offer applications such as ASP,PHP, and Java. It is also good for a web hosting company to have preinstalled scripts like those for forums or content management systems like Joomla or Wordpress. I personally like the web hosts who offer Cpanel with Fantastico just for the ease of use. <br /><br />If you intend to collect payments on your website then you are going to want to be sure to have SSL with at least 128 bit encryption for secure online purchases. You may also want to go with a supported gateway for your online shopping cart so that credit cards can be processed in real time using the larger processing entities such as Verisign or Paypal.<br /><br />If you have a website or blog that requires a database then you will absolutely need a web host that offers this with scripting such as SQL so that the web pages can be read to gain access to the particular database and display the content.<br /><br />The amount of space you will need plays a huge part on determining the web host you ultimately choose and this is why web design is such a huge factor. As a general rule of thumb, the average web page will need less than 1MB so if you have a 100 page site then 100 MB of space will be more than sufficient. However, the more pictures, video, or audio you add into the equation the more disk space you will need.</p><h3 class="popup">About the Author </h3><p>Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. Find more information on <a href="http://www.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com/">low cost web hosting</a> at http://www.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com</p> 2006-07-20T00:26-04:00 http://articles.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com/?a=35115 <p>by Gregg Hall</p><p>With the proliferation of web hosting companies to choose from and even local operations springing up in spare bedrooms it is becoming increasingly difficult to discover the bad web hosts and separate them from the reputable ones. <br /><br />One of the first signs of a bad web hosting company that should set off sirens and warning bells in your head is lack of support. This is the easiest and quickest way to tell, if the company isn&rsquo;t returning your phone calls or emails then it&rsquo;s simple, they are no good. This is typical of the type of web hosting companies we see springing up all over the internet that have no support staff and offer no customer support whatsoever. Be careful and stay away from the small fly by night web hosts. Cheap can be costly in other ways, I like to test them ahead of time by calling in to ask about features and see how long I have to wait on hold listening to elevator music or how many push button prompts I have to go through to get a real person.<br /><br />Still another way to check out a web host is to look at their profit. If the web host you are looking at is traded publicly take a look at their profit reports, if they are then you&rsquo;re in good shape, if not you probably want to look elsewhere. If you are looking at a private hosting company take a look at the prices they are charging, are they the cheapest or are they in the middle? It is best to choose someone in the middle as those offering the cheapest are either cutting features, have no support, or are simply not making enough money to be able to remain a viable business.<br /><br />Another easy to see issue is constant price changes. If the web hosting company is constantly adjusting prices it indicates they don&rsquo;t know what they are doing or they are starving from charging to little to begin with and are now having to make adjustments.<br /><br />For hobby sites or web sites that really don&rsquo;t matter much it may not hurt you tremendously to have a bad experience with a web host, but if you are like many of us on the internet and are actually trying to earn a living, a bad web host can destroy your business overnight. Keep close tabs on the web hosting company you choose until they have proven themselves to be trustworthy.</p><h3 class="popup">About the Author </h3><p>Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. Find more information on <a href="http://www.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com/">low cost web hosting</a> at http://www.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com</p> 2006-07-20T00:22-04:00 http://articles.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com/?a=35114 <p>by Gregg Hall</p><p>One of the factors that many people forget about when they are looking for a web host is email. The types of accounts offered along with sizes and limitations are as varied as the web hosting companies are themselves.<br /><br />Every web host should provide you with the ability to have several email accounts, most will offer up to 10 with a basic low end account. Another feature to look for is a company that offers an account that will accept and hold any email sent to your domain that does not match an email address. This is due to the fact that many people misspell names and such and therefore emails get lost.<br /><br />You basically have three different email services available to you. The first is probably the one that most are familiar with, the POP or post office protocol works like a normal inbox such as your Outlook Express. You will be given a certain amount of storage space you are allowed but generally can only access from one computer.<br /><br />The second choice called IMAP or internet message access protocol will allow you to use your email account on many different computers so that you can access it at work and home. <br /><br />The third choice you have is a web based email which is of course the most flexible, allowing you to access your email from anywhere on the planet with a computer and an internet connection though a web browser. I like having all the options. <br /><br />The next consideration that you have is on the size limit of storage you have. Nearly every web hosting company will have some sort of restriction on the size of account you can have as well as on the size of messages that can be sent. This is especially crucial if you are using your email to send pictures or documents. One key thing you want to do if you are using outlook or outlook express is to select the notify option for when your email is opened so that you know it was received. Many times if a file is too large you will have no other way of knowing. If you don&rsquo;t get the notification then you know they didn&rsquo;t receive your message.<br /><br />Now, back to actual storage space, you should pick a web host company that offers a reasonable balance between the bandwidth limits and the size of the mailbox storage. For example if you have an account that offers 500MB of bandwidth but only a 3 MB data storage for email accounts.<br /><br />Another important issue to look for is outgoing email limits. If you are using your account for business you may need to send emails out to a large number of people several times a day, if the system automatically flags that as spam you will not be able to send them. Check the limitations on outgoing mail and be sure it suits your needs.</p><h3 class="popup">About the Author </h3><p>Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. Find more information on <a href="http://www.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com/">low cost web hosting</a> at http://www.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com</p> 2006-07-20T00:19-04:00 http://articles.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com/?a=35113 <p>by Gregg Hall</p><p>Your website or web address can be called a domain name, and is utilized for your web site as well as for email accounts and to FTP files. You can register a domain name as long as the network solution or server does not show that it is already taken. When you go to register a domain name this is checked automatically. You may also buy existing domains that someone has let expire through expired domain specialty companies.<br /><br />It is also possible for you to transfer any name that is already active by a web host to a network solution specialist. The process to pint a domain name to your hosting account from a network solution account is somewhat easy. <br /><br />You can also have many different name extensions for your domains under one domain provider or network solution. It is very important to protect your accounts from being hacked and a program by the name of Domain Protect does this by monitoring and not allowing any name transfers to take place that you have not authorized. Make sure that you provider offers this service to keep your domains from being pirated.<br /><br />Another tip I would like to give you before we get into how to point your domain to another host is choosing a domain. When choosing a domain do not allow yourself to be prideful, by that I mean don&rsquo;t choose your name for a business website. I think that everyone should own their own name if possible but not for use as a business website. <br /><br />For example if you are looking for a mortgage company are you going to look for bobsmithmortgage or wefinancerealestate? Which one makes more sense for a mortgage company to use? Get creative and use the keywords people will be looking for, if you are selling real estate in a particular town try to use the town&rsquo;s name in the domain, like navarrepropertyforsale or navarrerentals, etc. This is easy to do and will get you much more traffic in the long run.<br /><br />Now, on to pointing your domain to a new web host. Let&rsquo;s say that you have registered your domain name with a registrar like Godaddy. You simply log in to your account and look for the domain that you want to edit, then find DNS management. Once you are here, you will see a series of numbers beginning with DNS, replace these numbers with the ones that you get from your hosting company. In most cases you will only have 2 sets of numbers and they will begin like this, DNS1, OR DNS15, etc. But you will have to choose at least 2. Save your changes and wait for about 24 hours in most cases for the change to propagate across the internet, that&rsquo;s all there is to it.</p><h3 class="popup">About the Author </h3><p>Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. Find more information on <a href="http://www.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com/">low cost web hosting</a> at http://www.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com</p> 2006-07-20T00:15-04:00 http://articles.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com/?a=35112 <p>by Gregg Hall</p><p>If you are going to have any kind of web presence you will need a web hosting company to host your site. It doesn&rsquo;t make any difference whether you are a large company doing business on the internet with shopping cars and thousands of products or just someone who wants to share their hobby with the world. <br /><br />There are so many different web hosting companies out there that it can be a confusing process just trying to choose one, much less trying to find one that is affordable. Here are a few things to consider that will take some of the headache out of the process for you.<br /><br />The first thing that must be determined is what type of website or websites you are going to feature. This will greatly influence your ultimate choice in web hosts. If you are only going to have a website of less than one hundred pages and you aren&rsquo;t going to be hosting videos and streaming audio you will find that a standard entry level web hosting package will probably do the trick for you. You can find these packages for under $10 per month and there are numerous companies that offer this type of service.<br /><br />Another option to consider as a small company is shared web hosting. Again you can get this type of service for well under $10 per month and you can always upgrade as you grow. The thing to remember is not to sacrifice quality just to save a few bucks a year. There isn&rsquo;t a lot of difference in price to go with a web host that offers really good features as opposed to one that offers shoddy service.<br /><br />One of the other issues that can be confusing for people is that of bandwidth. In a nutshell, this is the amount of data that your site is allowed to transfer through the web host&rsquo;s servers. If you are operating a business website do not skimp on this. Many web hosts have automatic shut downs enabled if your site goes over its monthly bandwidth allotment. It isn&rsquo;t as crucial if you are just running a personal or hobby type of site but if you are running a business a shut down website is the equivalent of locked doors at a brick and mortar business.<br /><br />Although it is nearly impossible to determine a bandwidth amount in the beginning you can get a good idea to start with by figuring the number of web pages you have, their size in megabytes, and the number of hits you expect daily and multiply it to get an idea for the bandwidth usage you may have over a month. If you choose the right web hosting company they will let you upgrade if it looks like you are going to go over. Another key is to be sure that the company offers web stats that will allow you to check the traffic and hits that are coming to your site.</p><h3 class="popup">About the Author </h3><p>Gregg Hall is an author and internet marketing consultant living in Navarre Florida. Find more information on <a href="http://www.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com/">low cost web hosting</a> at http://www.lowcostwebhostingpackages.com</p> 2006-07-20T00:11-04:00