How to make the shift from one host to another
By admin | February 19, 2008
Most webmasters have had some sort of bad experience with their hosts. Very often you find that a host doesn’t fulfill your needs anymore or they have over priced you. So when you finally find one that suits your needs, you have to make the big move from your old host to your new one. This is how you can make sure your move to the new server is a smooth one:
When you set up an account with the new hosting company tell them that you don’t want the domain name transferred until you tell them so. Replicate your current directory on your new server after you have logged into it and upload everything there but your CGI/PERL scripts. If the PERL is different on the new server you’ll have to edit the scripts manually so that they change before uploading them.
Now it is time to do some testing. To make sure that the upload went well and that everything is working after the domain name transfer takes place test a few key pages. You will have to enter the URLs of the pages yourself. This you can do by replacing the IP address with what your hosting company assigned you and the HTML file names with the actual names of the files on your server.
Once you’re sure that everything is working properly, tell your hosting company to transfer the domain name. Once the transfer is done you may have to wait up to 2 weeks for the DNS servers all over the world to be updated.
While you’re waiting you’ll have to check both your e-mail accounts. After around two weeks, cancel your account with the previous hosting company.
If you’ve followed all the steps correctly you shouldn’t have had too much problem making the shift. Have fun.
Topics: Choosing a Web Host, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Acciato offers hosting with a twist
By admin | February 17, 2008
There is a site called Acciato which provides hosting with a very interesting. The site will host your content for free in return for you continuously putting in some input onto their forum. Basically it’s a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ kind of thing.
The site offers a free web hosting bundle with the following features:
<!–[if !supportLists]–>· <!–[endif]–>500 MB of space which is great considering it’s free.
<!–[if !supportLists]–>· <!–[endif]–>15 GB of bandwidth per month which again is very good.
<!–[if !supportLists]–>· <!–[endif]–>No ads which is good since you decide what gets space on your website
<!–[if !supportLists]–>· <!–[endif]–>Place your own ads (so you can make the additional reveue)
<!–[if !supportLists]–>· <!–[endif]–>PHP 5
<!–[if !supportLists]–>· <!–[endif]–>Unlimited Domains which means you can host as many sites as you want
<!–[if !supportLists]–>· <!–[endif]–>Unlimited MYSQL databases
<!–[if !supportLists]–>· <!–[endif]–>CGI/PERL/Ruby on Rails
The thing with this thing is that you have to be very active so that the site continues to host you. The logic behind this is that they can keep generating content through users and this will build page views and translate into AdSense clicks. This is probably a better way to go about things than most sites that just have automated stuff popping up every now and then.
So in order to be eligible for free hosting you have to write at least 5 posts or earn 14 points. This seems a decent option if you’re extremely low on cash and have a little spare time to write a few articles each day. If however time is important to you and you don’t mind spending something extra to another hosting service to host you site then you should probably look somewhere else.
Though I’d definitely give the developers of the site brownie points for innovation and the fact that they give people with low finances a chance to get up there.
Topics: Choosing a Web Host | No Comments »
Who’s the owner?
By admin | January 31, 2008
When a customer orders a website from a hosting service the issue that arises is who owns the intellectual property rights of the website. A customer would normally raise the point that if he didn’t own the rights to the website, he would be chained to the host. So the question arises what does a customer expect when he orders a website and what does the host agree to offer?
It is the custom-designed features of a website that make it popular with users and naturally the argument would tend to be in the customer’s favor. Thus such interest that the customer might have in the website must be protected. The contract that the customer enters into with the web developers on the face of it grants ownership of the customer’s website, but what is the extent of the customer’s right?
But the legal reality is that only on the basis of such an argument the customer cannot be granted the ownership of the website. Unless the customer bargained upfront for such ownership and paid a premium for it, he cannot be said to be the real or the rightful owner of the site.
But if you take care while entering into a contract you should still be able to guarantee that you still have the rights. Most contracts refer to a ‘customer’s website’ and talk about transferring it to the customer without actually defining what it is. What needs to be ascertained is whether site-enabling software is also included in this. So when you enter into a contract with a web developer it will jeopardize the ownership of your code and in turn your website unless your contract is framed correctly. If you are careful and smart though you can retain rights to your website as well as your software and that is the best possible scenario.
Topics: Choosing a Web Host, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Choosing a web host
By admin | January 23, 2008
When people look around before choosing a web hosting service it seems like everyone is offering the best and making a choice can be exceedingly difficult. Every hosting service seems to promise the best service for the most competent price. The challenge herein lies in separating the truth from the tall claims and this can be quite an ordeal. Reliability is the most highly priced quality in hosting services and also the rarest.
There is no certain way to do this. Almost every web hosting service promises that a site will be available at least 99 % of the time but in almost all cases this is not true. Most hosting services have a server crash or shut down for maintenance quite often and during this time there is almost no customer service in place either. Many hosting companies go as far as to get a certification from a third party that they are uptime at least 99% of the time in order to get your custom.
Even the most planned server experiences downtime and at such a time site monitoring services come in handy. These services monitor sites, servers and other associated things such as routers so that if any of the sites you have requested to be monitored has a problem you are alerted immediately. Some service providers however prohibit such monitoring services because it adds to the bandwidth usage which adds to the load on the server which slows things down considerably.
So when you’re deciding on a web hosting service check out how durable it really is. Don’t listen to claims that are made on websites and find out for yourself through monitors. You are going to be stuck with the same hosting service for some time to come so it is best if you satisfy yourself about its services before proceeding.
Topics: Choosing a Web Host | No Comments »
dreamhost causes nightmares
By admin | January 17, 2008
Los Angeles based web hosting service Dreamhost just caused a huge amount of inconvenience to their customers. Not to mention sleepless nights and anxiety. Every customer of Dreamhost was billed for an additional year when the wrong date was entered in their automated billing program. The hosting service apparently overbilled their customer up to $ 7.5 million in hosting fees.
The villain in this whole issue is apparently their co-founder Josh Jones who accidentally ran its billing software at the wrong date. He ran the software for outstanding charges up to 31st December 2008 instead of 31st December 2007. Apparently this goof up is big news and customers all over are going crazy with being billed at yearly rates for the month.
What was highly interesting was how Lunarpages which is another hosting site reacted. They immediately put up a huge post about how Dreamhost screwed up and they also offered a special coupon code for those whom they called “Dreamhost refugees”.
Most customers were overcharged by $ 250 and lots of customers who are facing overdraft charges have been shooting off emails while some have been demanding lots of money. Apparently Dreamhost is working to resolve the issue and have assured customers that there is no need to contact their credit card companies or banks about the billing errors. I’m not so sure about this piece of advice because if you’re facing overdraft charges it’s always better to let the bank know so you don’t get penalized for something you didn’t do.
The whole episode has got customers really scared about Dreamhost’s reliability now while other hosting services have been having a great laugh at Dreamhost’s expense. Even Google ads have various hosts taking a dig at Dreamhost’s major goof up.
Topics: Billing News, Industry News | No Comments »
BlueHost is the perfect host
By admin | January 7, 2008
BlueHost gets an overwhelmingly positive response from users and very little negative reviews. As a hosting site it has proven to be very reliable with good support and good customer care. Users have had very little to complain about where BlueHost is concerned.
The complaint most people have with their hosts is that they have a lot of down time and that the servers crash often and for long periods of time at a stretch. With BlueHost the occasions when the server has crashed and the OS has had to be rebuilt are very few. In the rare occasions that this does happen they provide excellent customer care. The BlueHost Support Center allows users to make support tickets that are replied to within 24 hrs. They also have a Live Chat option on their website which allows users to interact with so that you can figure out what went wrong. There is also a discussion forum where BlueHost users can discuss the problems and issues they have.
The president of the company Matt Heaton has a blog where he writes about what happens behind the scenes. They also keep trying to improve themselves by increasing space and giving new offers to their users for no additional cost.
Most users have absolutely no problems with BlueHost. There are a few who do have complaints though. These complaints however are mostly to do with the amount of time the technical support team takes to get things back on road. Some users have complained about poor customer service but these seem to be the exception. Some also feel that the customer care executive has very little or no technical know how at all.
By and large BlueHost has got good reviews from customers who continue to renew their subscription with BlueHost instead of shifting to other hosts.
Topics: Support News | No Comments »
Fantastico
By admin | December 31, 2007
Many sites these days have web applications. Behind them all is Fantastico which is a commercial script library and it automates the installation of such applications to a website. These scripts generated by Fantastico are administered from the control panel of the website.
When a new application is installed on a website or a new website is started, Fantastico is used. The software creates tables in the database, installs software, gets permission and modifiers the web server configuration files. A lot of very popular websites and services use Fantastico including Wikipedia, blogs, sites that share photos and those that have shopping carts like Amazon, Walmart and others.
Fantastico has made many things possible that would not have been had it not have come into use. It has added whole new features to website which earlier featured nothing more than text. It allows you to do so much more with your website now. The installation scripts are also very easy to use and do not require much expertise on the part of the owner.
Fantastico however is not maintained by the ISP and so there are older versions still in use which are known to have security problems. Also the default configuration is not very secure so when sites are initially set up and do not have a secure system in place, they also become a target for spammers.
However the overall utility of Fantastico is high so it is easy to ignore small flaws. It provides innumerable services that are used in all kinds of sites including shopping sites, social networking sites etc. It is reported to have over a million users all over the world. Fantastico might seem to be blowing its own trumpet with a name like that, but the honest truth is that when text was a norm Fantastico was indeed fantastic.
Topics: Unix Web Hosting | No Comments »
Godaddy Web Hosting - Over priced, under performer
By admin | December 25, 2007
GoDaddy claims to offer the best hosting service in the world, while I am not too sure about this claim. While the setup is excellent and there is a very high level of technical expertise it doesn’t quite make the grade because the customer service and the features are quite a disappointment.
Per say GoDaddy is not bad at all, it’s just that for the features it offers it is rather over priced. It has 5 GB of storage, can support 500 email accounts, offers 250 GB monthly data transfer capacity and limited platform support. Basically its much more expensive that other hosts who offer the same for a much lower price. GoDaddy has a lot of frills and a lot of technical nitty-gritties which are quite unnecessary because though it is very technologically sound there is no customer support which puts us in quite a bind if we have a problem.
GoDaddy offers telephone support, email support and other kinds of support but the problem is that it’s not good enough. They get back to queries after 10-12 hours which is just not good enough because when a person is running a site you can’t afford to not work for that much time.
On the plus side GoDaddy is pretty easy to use and has the same control panel as most others. It lets you manage your account, emails, web security and things like that which is quite good. It lets you manage statistic tools and install FrontPage Extensions . Overall though it needs quite an improvement before it can compete properly.
GoDaddy is short of many features others offer at a higher price. So unless they really get their act together and improve their customer service, I’m not going GoDaddy’s way for some time.
Topics: Choosing a Web Host, Unix Web Hosting | No Comments »
What is video hosting?
By admin | December 22, 2007
Video hosting is a very popular hosting service which allows users to upload and share their videos with people around the world through the internet. The user uploads the video clip onto the website where it is then stored on the database of that site. Many popular web hosting services exist these days with the more popular ones being YouTube, TVLinks etc and these have become extremely popular because a person can share his clips even if he does not have a domain of his own.
The increased availability of personal cameras and other recording devices has lead to a sudden boom in this market. People shoot videos of events or their dear ones and then upload them onto the host site where with the particular code others can view it. The fact that these services make it extremely easy for users and makes the need for CDs and DVDs redundant is one of the reasons why websites of this kind are so popular. Such sites eliminate costs, they also provide the ease of a common place and since uploading and viewing videos is so easy and require little or no technical knowledge these things are becoming increasing popular and more and more internet users are taking to them.
However such a service is not without its problems. Most of these services have been accused of copyright infringement and in most cases the videos are uploaded by private users and no rights are given to the company owning the video. In such situations it is unclear who is in the wrong because the sites have no control over who posts what. Some sites however discourage users from uploading copyrighted videos. However as of now with no strict law in place, there is not much that can be done against such services. Internet users meanwhile rejoice.
Topics: E-Commerce | No Comments »
What is a dedicated hosting service?
By admin | December 13, 2007
A dedicated hosting service is one where a client has a server to himself and does not have to share it with anybody. This is better than shared hosting especially in cases of a company or organization where if they lease a server they have complete control over it and it is more flexible.
The choice of operating systems is determined by the price, demand and availability and though Linux is available without extra cost, Microsoft increases the cost of running a dedicated server. A monthly fee is charged and provides updates using an application called up2date. Using an OS reduces the owner’s burden of site management.
Dedicated server hosting means managing the server which can include doing the following things:
· Updating the OS
· Updating applications
· Monitoring the server
· Firewall updates
· Updating anti viruses
· Performing security audits
· Backups and restoration
· Disaster recovery
· Installing software
· Detecting intrusion
Service providers often bill the owners of sites for the software they use. Many companies now offer software along with dedicated servers at a reduced monthly fee. Different softwares are available depending on the requirement and servers can be made according to the needs of the business.
Dedicated servers are probably a better choice in the long run as compared to shared servers. Though while setting up a site it may seem cheaper and better to go in for a shared site, as far as your business is concerned dedicated server is always preferable. It allows you the freedom to implement your needs and bring about changes and gives you much needed flexibility. The initial cost may be a deterring factor but after some time of use you will realize the prudence of such a step.
Topics: Dedicated Servers | No Comments »