The Rationale Behind Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates – The Value Added Business

Trust is a perennial issue on the Internet – it has always been and (probably) will always be. But the reality is that today’s technology has made online business transactions more the norm rather than the exception.

From the end-user’s point of view, convenience against security presents a dilemma. How do I know I’m looking at a legitimate website? Is that really my bank’s website I’m looking at on my browser? Is there real business behind the site that offers such insanely cheap price? Those questions and other similar ones are common enough – and certainly valid. From the perspective of the E-business website owners on the other hand, such mistrust and ambivalence is bad for business. Understandably, everyone seeks guarantee and assurance when they do business online.

The Basics of SSL Certificate

Secure Sockets Layer or SSL was developed by Netscape in 1994. It’s a worldwide standard security technology which creates encrypted link to ensure all data that passes between the web server and the web browser remains confidential and secure. Millions of consumers recognize and associate the “padlock” displayed on the browser as the icon of trust on the website.
E-business providers protect their customers and guarantee that online transactions are kept safe and private through SSL protocol, which they can only use upon issuance of the required SSL certificate. This certificate, which is issued by the Certification Authorities or CA, provides the opportunity for e-Business website owners to demonstrate their trustworthiness; thus, leverage an increased level of trust among visitors and turn them into paying customers.

What the Customers See

URLs with an SSL connection use https instead of just http. The “s” at the end obviously stands for “secure”. When the customer clicks on the Padlock your SSL Certificate and company details are displayed.

Company details. SSL Certificates typically contain your domain name and company name; your address, inclusive of city, state and country; details of the Certification Authority responsible for the issuance of the Certificate; and the expiry date of the Certificate. Take note that only certificates issued by High Assurance Certification Authorities actually display company details; which is another assurance that customers may be looking for when making an online purchase.

Expiry date. When a browser connects to a secure site, it does three things: It retrieves the SSL Certificate and check that it has been issued by a Certification Authority that the browser trusts, that it is being used by the website for which it has been issued, and that it has not expired. Failing on any one of these checks causes a warning to be displayed to the end user. Some customers also get concerned when they see that the certificate is soon to expire. It is important therefore, to renew your certificate with ample time to spare before the actual expiration date. A smart alternative is to purchase a multi-year certificate to minimize set up costs; plus, your customer will find it reassuring that you will still be around in the years to come.

Why You Need SSL Certificates

Face it; people never buy from salesmen they don’t trust. Majority of consumers these days expect security to be an integral part of any online service they use; they require that details they provide on the Internet are kept private and confidential. For most customers, the only time they will ever consider purchasing products or services online is when they are assured to full satisfaction that their detailed information is safe and secure. Thus, you need to allay consumer apprehensions by providing trust indicators. Just like the real world, it is natural need for people to feel confident before going down an unknown path. The SSL Certificate guarantees your customers that you take their security seriously and this gives them the confidence that you have eliminated the risk usually associated with online transactions.

The EV Certificate – Do you really need one?

Extended Validation or EV Certificate, which was introduced in 2007, is a significant update of the SSL Certificate validation process that introduced substantial changes to verification methods used in authenticating the identity of online businesses. It provides consumers with a higher trust level while online by identifying which websites are legitimate businesses with verifiable credentials. These new certificates are indicated when the address bar on a visitor’s browser turn green.

SSL Certificate Authorities are already performing thorough and meticulous checks to validate the legitimacy of businesses. However, various CAs currently using non EV certificates employ varied types and levels of authentication; sometimes creating online security vulnerabilities that are frequently exploited for fraud, identity theft and other Internet crimes.

In contrast, the validation process for EV Certificates requires all CAs to rigorously scrutinize each business, using a prescribed set of sources and methods, before certificates are issued. The new certificates oblige businesses to complete a comprehensive and methodical documentation and verification process of current business licenses and incorporation paperwork. The CAs has to verify the accuracy of the data through additional sources; which may include on-site visits to the business, in some cases. This is aimed at resolving the variations in validation process; thus enhance Internet security features.

To the end users, this means that e-Businesses that have EV SSL certificates are much more likely to be legitimate entities, compared to those that only have the standard SSL certificates, which can be obtained by anyone even without verification.

The bottom line: Extended Validation SSL certificates are the latest secure certificates that offer the highest level of outward security to end users on the market today. So if you ask if it is worth it to have an EV SSL Certificate, the answer is: Absolutely, YES!

About the author

This article was written by Garen Arnold, who is a graphic designer out of Kansas City, Missouri. Garen provides people with the Best Web Hosting Service by using his expertise to help people choose the best web hosting service for their business.

Introduction

The competitive advantage presented by cloud hosting and platform as a service vendors to large scale national and international businesses has been well documented over recent months, with the opportunity for a highly scalable service alongside excellent reliability and near 100% uptime proving to be key factors in such companies uptake of these services. Larger businesses have been able to roll out PaaS and SaaS to their sales forces and other arms of their operations – safe in the knowledge that they are receiving strong reliability, performance guarantees and 24 hour technical support.

However, as knowledge of such services gradually becomes more widespread, it is not only blue chip organizations that can benefit from the advantages that cloud hosting, PaaS and SaaS can bring to a business environment. Indeed, small to medium sized businesses are gradually beginning to take the plunge and begin to embrace these emerging technologies; seeing an opportunity for cost effective and secure solutions for their IT, software, hosting, system backup and electronic communication needs under 1 fully managed roof. Some of the potential advantages of such services for SMB’s are discussed below.

Cost Effective, Manageable and Scalable

By selecting a cloud hosting, PaaS or SaaS package that is tailored to the individual needs of their business, SMB’s can create uniquely bespoke, cost effective solutions that save money on “lump sum” direct costs (such as software licensing, servers etc), and instead replace them with more manageable monthly payments on fixed budgets. Bespoke software packages that are accessed remotely allow also small businesses to pay only for what they need and are easily scalable as a business grows.

Convenient, Secure and Reliable

With near 100% uptime and 24/7/365 expert support, cloud hosting services can allow SME’s to focus on the core aspects of their own operations with a minimum fuss, downtime, maintenance and hassle. With this greater reliability and continuity, there is also no need to call in an IT consultant every time there are any issues with your server – thus allowing for further time and cost saving opportunities and greater productivity.

Space Saving

Many small businesses simply do not have sufficient office space to house a large, bulky, in house server unit. The remote access available through cloud hosting services therefore gives SMB’s a much needed opportunity to save on precious office space and therefore maximise the potential of the small amount of room they have available for other more pertinent purposes relevant to the core aspects of their business.

Eco Friendly

By eliminating the amount of power consumption that may be used by in an house server and other electronic equipment and instead remotely accessing their hosting, data storage and backup facilities via the cloud platform, SMB’s can in essence become much more eco friendly and green in their day to day business operations – diminishing their carbon footprint while simultaneously saving money by reducing associated costs and electricity bills.

About the Author

Chris Shelbourn is a freelance writer who has written on behalf of Commensus PLC – a UK supplier of cloud hosting and platform as a service, with bespoke packages tailored to the needs of both small and medium sized businesses and large scale international organizations.

Everybody in the web hosting industry is obsessed of the words "Clouds", "Cloud computing" and "Cloud hosting". But very few discuss standards that companies use to provide Cloud hosting services.

Actually It is not like there are any standards in Cloud hosting. Most providers who offer some sort of clustered, grid or cloud hosting services do everything from "home". Today’s "Clouds" are home-made technologies! It is like Wild West.

Don’t get me wrong and I do not underestimate anyone’s achievements. RackSpace is great! Other web hosts that run any forms of grid or cloud infrastructures also deserve attention. But all of them (OK, most of them) use proprietary technologies which represent their own approach to cloud computing and virtualization.

Unlike traditional Web Hosting industry, as we know it for years, the emerging Cloud Hosting market looks like jungle. It is not based on standards. Thank god that there are companies like Red Hat (ref: http://www.redhat.com/solutions/cloud/access/guidelines.html) which created standards that can be used as guidelines from Linux development community. Do I forget Microsoft? Of course not! If we should count on Microsoft to help us moving to the clouds it would cost us a fortune and we would fine ourselves tied up to Windows for ages!

In Search of Cloud Hosting Standards

The automation standards of the Cloud hosting industry are about to be established! In traditional Web Hosting industry we have cPanel, Plesk, Direct Admin and other automation software platforms. Web hosts use them for more than a decade and these platforms have become web hosting standards.

All these work good both for consumers and providers. From a user’s perceptive, using these platforms allows consumers to switch servers or to migrate hosting accounts from one web host to another easily. From the perceptive of hosting providers,standardized hosting plaforms help them to create stable and reliable IT hosting service models Some web hosts, like Hostway, Aplus, etc. use their proprietary software to automate web hosting management.

However for most popular web hosting providers, especially those in shared hosting and virtual private server (VPS) hosting, base their business models on the server automation standards mentined above.

The best we can do is to find a way to continue using these web hosting automation platforms in the new Cloud dominated hosting industry. This should help small and middle-sized hosting providers to keep going and to compete (at a leveled ground) with other major Cloud hosting providers. Consumers will also benefit a lot of standards based Cloud hosting services as it encourages healthy competition among the providers (so you get to choose from hundreds or even thousands of different cloud hosting service providers).

Bottom line

I think that the hosting industry has always begun searching for its Cloud standards. Besides the platforms of VMware (too expensive), Sun, IBM, HP used from  major corporations, there is a growing demand for more affordable cloud hosting automation platforms. I can not project which companies will establish themselves as a providers of automation solutions for the Cloud hosting industry. A platforms like Fuscan Linux Cloud, Cloud Linux, Abicloud, Azati, CloudControl, etc.

About the author: Dimitar Avramov

Dimitar Avramov is the CEO and founder of SingleOS LLC, a producer of Cloud computing generation enterprise automation solutions for the hosting industry. His company’s cloud platform Fuscan LBC is a high availability system for cPanel/WHM based Shared Hosting providers. He is an owner of Daw Web Hosting Blog and used to work as journalist in web hosting industry. You can read more of his writing about cloud hosting here and follow his tweets at DimitarAvramov.

*Side note: Got an idea for this blog – why not write for us? More details about guest posting at W.H.S.R.

The concept behind reseller hosting is simple: A hosting reseller buys a ‘reseller hosting account’ from a service provider (a larger hosting company or a data center owner) and then sells it to others for a profit.

How Reseller Hosting Works?

Its business model is pretty much the same with any offline retailing business – the reseller may purchase the hosting capacities (bandwidth/hard disk space/software/CPU power) themselves at cheaper rates and then sell them at higher "retail" rates. Typically, hosting resellers often operate their business under an independent brand or label. In other words, a hosting reseller will not inform the end users that he/she is selling someone else’s services.

It does not need extensive technical knowledge to be a hosting reseller. In most cases, the data center operator is the responsible party for hardware maintenance and configurations. A hosting reseller is more like an agent where his/her jobs are mainly interfacing with the existing customers and winning more new customers. This is why a hosting reseller firm often spend greatly on advertising campaigns.

The economics of reseller hosting

Let’s do some simple mathematics and see how a reseller host make money.

John purchases Hostgator’s Copper Reseller Package and gets 80GB disk space, 700GB bandwidth at $34.95 per month. He then breaks the package into 10 separate accounts with 8GB storage and 70GB bandwidth each and sells it for $8.99/mo. At the end of the day, John’s profit (assuming that he sold all 10 accounts) will be $89.90 – $34.95 = $54.95/mo. Not much, but it’s still some sweet money considering that there are not much work to be done.

Repeat that for another 9 times and you’ll get a nice $550 passive income per month. In fact, why just stop at doing 10 sales – the Internet is an ever-expanding world, why not buy and resells more? 100 customers earn you $550/mo;  why not go 1,000 or 2,000 or even 5,000!

Well, that seems like a sure-fire business model, why not we just start one!

But wait, the question to ask is why: Why should your customers buy your *limited* hosting package when other larger web hosts are selling cheap *unlimited* hosting?

Having a unique selling point is a must for every successful hosting reseller. Some might offer free CMS and blog installation services; some might help in website design and development; but what most successful resellers do is to focus on profitable niche markets (example: Europe/India/Asia markets, gaming community, specific script user community, etc).

How to choose a good reseller hosting provider?

Here are some important consideration factors when you are searching for the right reseller hosting provider.

Reliability Needless to say, your reputation as a hosting reseller depends a lot on the quality of your provider’s servers and network. Make sure that you stick with reseller hosting provider that has strong uptime record or the sky will be falling on your business.

Customer Supports Efficient customer support is another important characteristic you should be looking for. Remember that you will have a lot of different clients to handle thus chances of things get screwed up are very high. A dedicated team of technical support that are able to respond to your requests is extremely important.

Web Hosting Features Basic hosting features like bandwidth, disk space, and addon domain capacity are vital for hosting resellers as these are the ‘products’ that determine how many accounts you can create and sell. More allocated bandwidth or addon domains means more profits.   

Scalability If you are just starting out reselling hosting services, you may want to pay for only a few domains at a time, and provide a very basic range of applications. However, as your business grows, the number of sites you service will increase and you may also need to increase the range of applications you can provide your customers. Does your host provide a relatively hassle-free way to upgrade? For instance, could you move easily from a shared server arrangement to a dedicated server without needing to change hosts?

Wrapping Things Up…

You probably ended up in this post because that you are new to all these but interested to get your hand wet soon. If so, all I have to say is ‘Just Do It!’. Web hosting is a huge industry and it is far from being saturated – competition is steep but I am pretty sure there is still money to be made!

And, in case my article does not clear your doubts fully. If that is the case, I would suggest further reading at this valuable section of Web Hosting Talk Forum: Reseller Hosting (WHT).

Sounds scary?

In fact this is why the practice of using a fake address and registrant name for the WHOISdata is still pretty common nowadays for self protection. However, the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), global regulatory body for the domain name industry) has a policy stating that each and every registrar is required to keep a WHOIS database that contains publicly accessible contact information for all names that have been registered. What make things worse, if you do not submit correct or complete information; your domain name is subject to being deleted from the registry.

I know, it’s depressing to realize how limited is our defense against data miners, spammers, and identity thefts. I bet if people knew that they could be put in such a bind, they would probably think twice about registering a domain name.

But wait, for every problem on the internet there is a solution. This is where domain privacy (also, WHOIS Privacy) comes in. Domain privacy is a type of addon service mainly offered by domain registrars.

How domain privacy works?

A user buys privacy from the company, who in turn replaces the user’s info in the WHOIS with the info of a forwarding service (for email and sometimes postal mail, done by a Proxy server) such as “Domains by Proxy, Inc.” or eNom’s “Whois Privacy Protection Service”.

Is my private info 100% safe after utilizing domain privacy feature?

The domain privacy feature is often seen as the ‘ultimate protection’ on WHOIS info. Just a simple search online would leads you to dozens of articles stating the benefits of domain privacy. Spam protection and info shielding are two of the most trumpeted benefits of a domain privacy feature.

But wait, nothing is completely safe online.

A domain privacy feature is like a firewall in computer network – it simply shields your info from the public but your data is still kept in registrar’s database and there is still risk of info leaking. To many registrars, it takes little persuasion to release the so-called ‘private’ information to the world, requiring only a phone request or cease and desist letter.

This explains why some webmasters will take the hassle of ordering using money order (to avoid exposing credit card info) and registering their domain name offshore (to reduce the chance of local syndicate attacks).

Back to our question: Is private information 100% protected under domain privacy feature? Not really. In many cases, it’s just a feature people buy to help them to sleep better at night.

More readings about domain privacy

I hope this short article will raise your awareness about WHOIS info and the privacy protection you can have against unethical acts. There is an in-depth article (Private Domains Not So Private) by Daniel Terdiman on CNet back in year 2005, I suggest you to read it if you wish to learn more on the topic.

I’d say it is the Internet and automation capabilities.

There are 1,7 billion Internet users today and this number grew 300% since 2002. A lot of these people have hosting accounts for their personal blogs, pages, forums, web sites, e-shops and so on. So if you are one of those people, think about how often you find yourself in need to repeat simple operations numerous times a week to keep your site clean, optimized and safe. If your answer is “often” and you are tired of this – here you’ll find a tip how to make your life a bit easier. This article is about the cron – a unique automation utility for Unix based servers.

Cron daemon

To describe the concept of a cron job we should first of all consider a service running on a server. Most things executed on any computer are processes, browser being the most familiar one. If you open your browser and then go to your Task Manager, you will discover that it is running as a process.

Simply speaking process is an application, your computer is handling at the moment. The service, on the other hand, is a long running application, that is usually started automatically on system start up. It runs in the background, consuming as little resources as possible when it is not needed. When the time comes for it to perform an activity it "wakes up", does what it must and then returns into sleeping mode? again. Examples of server processes are http service, MySQL service, ftp service and so on. On Unix servers (i.e. servers powered by Unix, Linux or FreeBSD) such services are usually called daemons.

The Cron Daemon is a special service capable of executing tasks at specific points in time without user’s intervention or control. It can be called an automatic scheduling machine. The name cron comes from the word chronograph . By using cron scripts, you can create sets of commands you want executed on a scheduled basis automatically.

Crontab and commands

Cron commands are stored in a special file. It is called crontab(which stands for cron table). The list of commands you can execute manually can be performed with a cron as well. Normally cron tasks include the following:

• making backups;
• any kind of file operations (deleting, copying, moving, renaming etc.);
• sending and receiving updates emails;
• installing software updates;
• checking links on other websites;
• optimize databases;
• many more;

The mentioned crontab is a file that usually has the following content:

01 * * * * interpreter-1 script_path-1
02 4 * * * interpreter-2 script_path-2
22 4 * * 0 interpreter-3 script_path-3
42 4 1 * * interpreter-4 script_path-4

In the example above the first 5 items in each line are the time scheduling parameters. First number stands for the minute field, second – for the hour field, third – for the day field, fourth – for the month field, fifth – for the weekday field. The possible values and field descriptions are shown in the table below:

Working with precise time and dates may be somewhat uncomfortable. Therefore, a special syntax is introduced: "*" – stands for any (so called wildcard symbol). If you want to configure the script to run at 15th minute of every hour you simply use the following sequence:

15 * * * *

If you want the script to run every 15 minutes you use the sequence like this:

15/* * * * *

The interpreter item in this example defines the shell or program you want to run the script with. For example, to a run a regular shell script daily with the bash shell, you use the following line:

* * 1/* * * /bin/bash /scripts/script1.sh

Here "/scripts/script1.sh" (script path from the cron tab file example) is an absolute path to the file your script is located in.

To edit crontab, use the command "crontab –e"in console. Editing crontabs in the console as well as using console itself is usually very inconvenient for regular users. Therefore, almost every hosting control panel contains a graphical user interface (GUI) for working with crontabs and configuring crons.

Crontab GUIs

The number of hosting control panels is quite large today, but there are a few most widely used by hosting companies due to their friendly interface and good integration with operating systems. Let’s take a look at how to configure the crontab in the two very popular panels: cPanel and DirectAdmin.

The GUIs of these two panels use the same concept as a regular cron table file. The time scheduling parameters remain the same, as well as their syntax. To specify months, days, hours and minutes, you still have to use numbers and the approach described earlier in the text. The interpreter and script path are defined in a separate field in these GUIs. This is also true for the email address for sending logs (available only for cPanel, while DirectAdmin will send the logs to the default e-mail address of the user). If you want no logs sent at all, you need to add the following command after the script path: ">/dev/null 2>&1". DirectAdmin’s panel has a special button for this, as shown on the screenshots below.

cPanel Cron Job Menu

To get to the crontab GUI, find the Cron Job button in the home of your cPanel:

Figure 1: cPanel "Cron jobs" menu icon

Figure 2: cPanel Cron Jobs menu fields

DirectAdmin Cron Job Menu

Locate the Conjobs button to enter the DirectAdmin crontab configuration GUI:

Figure 3: DirectAdmin Cronjobs menu

Cron scripts

When you know how to correctly configure the crontab scheduling, all you need to do to run a script. You can either write one yourself, using a regular text editor (like notepad on Windows), or you can search for it on the web. What’s good about cron scripts is that they can easily be modified and can be used with almost any software installed on your server. Writing your own scripts requires knowledge of the commands of the specific interpreter you are planning to use; thereby, before searching for specific instructions, decide which interpreter you’ll use. C shell is the most widely used interpreter, so if you are interested in creating your own scripts, then the best place to start is Linux Shell Scripting Tutorial.

Bottom Line

Automating tasks performed for a hosting account can save you a lot of time and ensure the safety of hosted data. One of the best and easiest ways to schedule autonomous execution of various actions is to use the cron job utility available on most Unix, Linux and FreeBSD servers.

Great advantage of cron jobs is the fact that tasks are performed without any intervention from the user’s side. Distinctive features of cron jobs include easiness of configuration, solid execution reliability and ability to use any installed interpreter for scripts. Additional comfort comes with the use of hosting control panels, as they provide GUIs for scheduling tasks. For more information on crons check the crontab manual page.

Guest post by Smirnovi4 from SiteValley blog.

About Sergey Smirnov.

Smirnovi4 graduated from Ukrainian National Aerospace University in 2010 with Master’s degree in “Propulsion systems and power installations of spacecrafts”. Currently he enjoys working as a writer for the SiteValley official blog and occasionally assists with marketing tasks. Author likes extreme sports (skateboarding, snowboarding, parachuting and scuba diving particularly). Music of his choice is punk and indie rock. His free time he dedicates to reading news of IT industry and music. Two of Smirnovi4’s greatest weaknesses are Dr. Pepper and flight simulators.

1. Is your hosting account suspended?
Did you make your hosting payment on time? Did your website exceed the bandwidth limit? Is your site throttled for some unknown reason? Check your inbox and see if there is any account suspension notification.

2. Is faulty node causing the outage?
Make a Traceroute and Ping check to see if there is a faulty node somewhere in your connection. If so, there is nothing much you can do but wait.

3. Is your site down for everyone?
Visit DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com (awesome web tool) and check if your ISP is having connection problem with your name server. If so, contact your ISP to rectify the problem.

4. Is your site down because of planned maintenance?
Check with your web host server status report and see if there is any maintenance outage announcement. If you are using Bluehost or Hostmonster, you can visit serverstatus.bluehost.com/ or serverstatus.hostmonster.com/, see if your server is affected by regular maintenance.

What if none of the above is the cause?

If all of the above do not resolve your problem, then things are not looking good for you. Your web server outage is most probably an unplanned event and it is time to get in touch with your web host supports. Shoot an email or get on to the live chat system and communicate with the support staffs.

In this article, I’m going to share with you a few frequent asked questions about domain names and I hope it will helps you to make better judgment.

Domain Name vs Web Hosting

A domain name is not a web hosting. Newbies often mix things up between domain names and hosting, these are two different things. A web hosting is where you get to store your data online; whereas a domain name is the ‘address’ of these data.

Domain Name vs Top Level Domain

All domain names end with a Top Level Domain (TLD), which consists of short set of letters. Take this website for example (WebHostingSecretRevealed.com), WebHostingSecretRevealed is the domain name whereas the ‘.com’ is the TLD. .net, .info, .org, .edu, and .biz are some of the common seen Top Level Domain.

Besides these generic TLDs, there is also another type of Top Level Domain that is normally known as the Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD). ccTLDs are meant to indicate a website’s location; for example website ends with .co.jp indicates that the site is based in Japan. Registration of ccTLDs is restricted for the citizens of the corresponding country; and the activities with such domains website are ruled by local regulations and cyber laws.

Subdomain vs Addon Domain

An addon domain refers to the additional domain name to be hosted in a hosting account; on the other hand, a subdomain refers to the secondary domain that is created on top of a ‘parent domain’.

Example: uk.yahoo.com, uk is the subdomain (with yahoo.com as the parent); if flickr.com and yahoo.com is hosted on the same hosting account, then flickr.com is the addon domain. Note that creating a subdomain is totally free of charge, while for addon domain you’ll need to pay just like when you are registering your primary domain.

How domain name works?

When the user requests a connection to your domain, Domain Name System (DNS) servers will ‘communicate’ with the corresponding registry for the requested domain; the registry then responds by informing which name servers (address of your web host) this domain is registered with; the request then goes to the name servers to obtain the actual IP address of the requested domain; the user then establishes connection (via web browser) with the said IP address.

Long story short, a domain name, with the help of DNS, tells the location of your website.

What is a domain name registrar?

A domain name registrar is the party that provides domain registration services to the public. A domain name registrar has to be accredited by ICANN; and when it is a matter of ccTLD, the registrar needs approval by the national ccTLD authority.

It is impossible for an end-user to register a domain name directly to ICANN – a designated registrar must be chosen. Each accredited registrar must pay a fixed fee of $4000 to ICANN as well as dividing a fee of $3.8 million among all registrars.

Should you own a domain name?

Some website owners (mostly bloggers) host their website or blog on a free platform and run it on a third level domain (like http://www.myblog.blogspot.com and http://www.myblog.wordpress.com). The question often raised is: Should you have your own domain name.

My answer is yes, absolutely.

Having your own domain name makes it easier to market your website. Furthermore there is less restriction with your own domain name (for example WordPress.com normally does not allow advertisements) and the cost of owning a domain is just $10/year.

How to choose a right domain name?

A good domain name plays a vital role in your web marketing effort.

Generally, you want something sticky (easy to remember), meaningful (related to your website content), and keyword-rich (not a must, but important if SEO is a major part of your web marketing strategy). Avoid long URLs and overuse of hyphens. Write your selected domain name on a piece of paper and check carefully if there’s any spelling mistake or unwanted pun. Remember the example of www.dicksonweb.com – a temperature instruments manufacturer’s website. The boss, Dickson, wasn’t aware that www.DicksonWeb.com can be read as www.DicksOnWeb.com. This created much PR tensions for the company and they had to change their site name to www.DicksonData.com (which doesn’t look very good too).

Do keep in mind that although your domain name is important, there are also another 99 things that make up a good website. It makes no sense to sweat too much in selecting the ‘best name’ for your website as eventually what users need is the quality of your web content or service.

Does a good domain name improve search engine rankings?

Some believe that search engine optimization (SEO) is nothing but stuffing keywords in the Meta tags and content. Well that’s the story for year 1998. Nowadays you need to do a lot more than that in order to win the search engine wars. Domain names, for instance, plays an important factor when it comes to SEO nowadays.

A domain name should be easy to memorize and related to the theme of the website. It is often highly recommend to have your primary targeted keywords included in your domain name as one, it tells your first time visitors what this site is about; and two, it allows search engines to group your website in the right category (and thus giving better opportunity to rank in related search result pages).

Does an aged domain helps in search engine rankings?

There are no clear-written guidelines or rules that an old domain will improve search engine rankings. As you can see from the video (April 2009) below, Matt Cutt (representing Google) did talk about the relationship between domain age, years of domain registration, and search engine rankings; and asked webmaster not to worry too much about site age.

HOWEVER, SEOs generally are convinced that search engines value older websites than the newer one. From my experience, search engines (namely Google) simply put more weight to an aged domain and tend to rank them better.

So to answer the question, yes, an aged-domain does help improve search engine rankings.

What else you need to know about domain names?

Basically, this article covers pretty much everything a normal webmaster needs to know about domain names. In case you think there are other points I had left out, feel free to ask questions or share your opinions in the comment section.

What is VPS hosting?

A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is like a server in a bigger server. I know the statment is a little confusing but please don’t get panic about it.

The actual concept behind VPS is very simple – basically what VPS hosting providers do is to split a server into multiple smaller size individual servers (using virtualization technology) and rent it out to different customers. Each of these virtual servers looks and feels the same like a dedicated server except for one thing – they share the same hardware with one another.

What’s good about VPS hosting?

From a customer’s perceptive, a VPS hosting is the perfect stepping stone between shared and dedicated web hosting. When shared web hosting is no longer sufficient and you are not ready to go with dedicated – VPS hosting is your answer.

Advantages of VPS over shared hosting

What’s best about VPS is the isolated hosting environment that secures your website’s performance and safety. As mentioned, a VPS-hosted website will operates independently like a dedicated server – you do not share disk space, RAM, processes, TCP/IP stacks, operating system, or whatsoever. What’s going on with your neighbors (other private servers that run on the same machine), either it’s overloaded with heavy traffics or severely hacked, will not affect your website’s performance.

Another pro of VPS compare to shared hosting is flexibility. With VPS hosting, you will get access to the system root. This means you are free to install any custom software or to tweak your system files in order to fulfill your website needs.

Advantage of VPS over dedicated hosting

When compare with dedicated hosting, VPS has only one advantage – it’s cheaper. In fact, it’s much, much cheaper. In many cases, while the features are more or less the same, a VPS hosting is 30-40% cheaper than a dedicated hosting deal.

For example, table above shows the price different between dedicated and VPS hosting.

What to look for when shopping for a VPS hosting?

Basically there are five main consideration points when choosing the right VPS hosting, namely – pricing, RAM allocation, customer supports, control panel, and hosting plan flexibility. I’ll get into the details one-by-one.

1. VPS Hosting Pricing

Money is always the main factor when we are purchasing something. When comparing the price of VPS hosting, do not aim for the cheapest deal, go with those with a reasonable price tag instead. The reason behind this is because we do not want our host to run on a thin profit margin. Yes I know it sounds crazy but it’s true. Think about it – we want stability when it comes to web hosting and shifting web host is certainly the last thing we want to do after settling down. A hosting company running on a thin profit margin is simply… instable (the risk of going out of business due to deficit accounts).

So again, if you are serious with your website, go for those with a reasonable pricing but not the cheapest.

2. Server Memory Capacity (RAM)

In my opinion, memory capacity (RAM) is the most important features in a VPS hosting. In fact, how well (or bad) your VPS hosting performs depends greatly on how much RAM you have on hand. The memory capacity simply influences everything in your virtual server – from server efficiency to speeds, and to power consumption. It’s so important that in many cases, RAM allocation actually serves as price determiner of the entire VPS hosting package.

Here’s rough idea on how much RAM you need. In brief, for a single website operation, you need at least 512 MB of RAM in order to run cPanel and Plesk on your VPS. Though cPanel states that it only needs 256 MB but as it is with other applications, 512 MB will ensure everything runs smooth. In case you are operating multiple websites on a single VPS, higher RAM is a must. Expect to go up to 2 GB if your websites are heavy trafficked.

Another term you should take heed of is the ‘Burstable RAM’, or in certain cases, the backup RAM. Burstable RAM is the temporary backup resources over your standard memory quota. Burstable RAM is extremely important to protect your website from sudden traffic-surge (for instance, a Digg- or Stumble-effect).

Generally for starter, a VPS plan with 512 MB RAM plus a burstable RAM of 1 GB should be more than enough.

3. Customer/Technical Supports

You should always communicate with the web host before making any purchase (especially when you are new). It’s not about checking which web host provides the fastest response; it’s about getting to know the people working inside the hosting company and check if you are comfortable to deal with the support staffs.

See, VPS hosting is unlike shared hosting where 90% of the operations are standard case. In VPS hosting, most of the things are ‘non-standard’ thus a technical support department that really care about their customers (and with the right knowledge) is extremely important.

4. Server Control Panel

VPS providers will normally offer you several options of control panels where the normal ones are either Plesk or WHM/cPanel. These control panels offers similar functionality where they enable you to edit files in the server for a web interface rather than manually and both are equally good.

A user-friendly control panel as it makes day to day server management easier – tasks such as adding domains, debugging, and setting up email accounts.

5. Flexibility

Do not go with VPS provider that has limited sets of hosting plans. As mentioned, VPS hosting is unlike shared hosting – where most of the operations are similar. Before purchase, you should check if the web host allows you to customize your VPS hosting plans.

For example, if you need 500 MB disk space and 5 GB monthly data transfer (something relative small), and 512 fixed RAM – it really makes no sense to sign up for a 80 GB disk space, 1000 GB monthly data transfer, and 512 fixed RAM for $74.95/mo. I mean, why settle with high server specs that you will never use when all you need is some extra memory capacity?

Which VPS hosting you should go with?

In case you are looking for the right VPS hosting, Hostgator and VPSNext are two of the ‘must-see’.

What’s good about VPSNext?

• Reasonable Pricing From my research, VPSNext’s pricing is always slightly cheaper than other similiar VPS hosting services. If you are searching for some bargain deals, VPSNext is your answer.
• Reliable Network Custom firewall, DDoS protected network, daily backup policy… VPSNext has, in fact, one of the safest network.
• Powerful Reseller Capabilities VPSNext allows customers to rebrand and resell their hosting capacity. As a customer, you can allocate separate resources for each one of your users (or clients), run your own private name servers, and have the ability to completely rebrand your control panel so you’re promoting your own business and brand identity.
• Valuable Addons VPSNext offers a couple of addon features that you don’t get elsewhere online , namely – Free $50 Google Adwords credits, $50 Miva Search credits, eNom Domain Reseller Account, and Merchant Account.

To learn more: http://www.VPSNext.com/vps-hosting

What’s good about Hostgator VPS hosting?

• Topnotch hosting services Based on my extremely good experience with their other hosting services – shared and dedicated hosting (see my Hostgator review).
• High Flexibility Hostgator VPS hosting plans are very flexible – 9 pre-set plans, managed/unmanaged options, different pre-installed operating systems, optional IP addresses, wide in house software supports, etc etc.
• Stability Hostgator is one of the fastest growing companies in United States (Won Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies Awards for a couple times).
• Room to expand As you might already knew, Hostgator also provides reseller and dedicated hosting plans – this gives room to expand when your website grows.
• Eco-friendly Last but not least, Hostgator is green. This means all servers are powered with recyclable clean energy.

To learn more: http://www.Hostgator.com/vps-hosting/

Final words about VPS hosting

There, I have put down all the important points about VPS hosting and I hope it helps you to understand and to choose your right web hosting.

Before you move on, there is still one last thing you should know – Do you need a VPS hosting? This, question, unfortunately, can be only answered by you. You’ll have to justify if a VPS hosting is necessary (or sufficient) for your website. What’s your 12 months plan for the website? How busy do you estimate your website will be? What are the custom applications to be installed? These are some of the must-ask questions and prevent yourself from overspending.

With that, I’ll end this article and good luck if you are shopping for the new VPS hosting!

The Infamous Ping Test

Some so call ‘tech shoppers’ like to act smart and run ping test on hosting provider’s website.

“This will show how fast the web host server is.” – that’s what my friend once told me. The ping test method is so popular that even experienced webmasters will think it actually works.

How to do a ping test?

A ping test is done when a short request is sent to the web server via your local machine. For example if I wish to ping-test Bluehost, I simply open my command prompt and hit ‘ping bluehost.com’. The ping results will come back in a time figures (normally in ‘ms’) to show how long it takes to get reply from the web server.

Why pinging the web host website will not work?

First of all a ping test is NEVER a good method to check on a web host server response rate. This is due to the fact that how well a web server response on a ping request depends on many factors that are not controlled by a web host (for example: distance between your computer and the servers).

Most importantly, you are (most of the time) hitting the wrong horse when you ping the web host’s website. Hosting providers are smart nowadays; they simply do not host their website on the same server as their customers. In fact, some web hosts even operate their websites on a different network system! Now tell me, how can you determine server response rate by pinging the web hosts’ websites?

How to check the speed of a web host?

If you would like to know how fast a web host is, the better way is to find a website that’s hosted on the web host instead of the web host’s website. Download a few files and wandering around the website should reveal what’s the web host response rate.

Another good way to check a server response rate is to run a website speed test online. Website speed test tools (like what you have on Top-Web-Hosting.com and WebsiteGoodies.com) are handy to check and compare web hosts’ speed performance.

Example of test results:

A few more words on website load time issue

Who’s responsible for a slow website?

A website’s response rate is dependent on many factors; including the hosting server CPU load, RAM usage, network speeds, and the web program’s efficiency. Do note that not every one of these factors are web host’s responsible.For instance, it’s the web owner’s responsibility to assure that his/her website is coded efficiently to avoid server resources wastage. Sometimes, it can be your ISP that’s responsible for the slow website.

How slow load time will affect your website?

Slow website load time is a problem that you cannot afford to overlook. A few critical consequences with slow website load time, including permanent lost of website traffics and increase of advertising cost are simply destructive.

Yes I know migrating from one web host to the other sounds like a hell lot of jobs to many. But when the web host can’t keep up with your hosting needs; the best thing to do is, always, say goodbye and move on to a new hosting company.

In this article, we are going to talk about the preparation jobs before the breakup. What are the things to be done before you dumb your web host?

1. Find a good web host that suits your hosting needs

“Eww, that’s a dumb statement. Of course I know that I need to find a web host before I can switch a web host!”

Isn’t far too obvious, right? The answer is No. In fact, many users who switched their web host did so little in researching their new web host.

The key is not about finding the best web host; it’s about finding a good web host that provides the necessary hosting features and scripts support. How many MySQL databases are allowed? How many addon domains are allowed? How many FTP access points are provided? Does the new web host support auto-installation for necessary scripts?

It’s important to be aware that not all hosting deals are the same and it’s (apparently) your job to filter out the good but unsuitable ones.

2. Backup everything on your website

The next to-do is to backup everything you have on your current server to a secure location. Your PC hard drive, the new web host, external hard disk… store it anywhere you like but make sure you have at least two copies of the data (yes, this includes your email address and PHP configuration files).

3. Transferring your domain name to a third party registrant

Rule#1 on how not to get screwed by your web host: You don’t register your domain together with your web host. If, unfortunately, you did register everything with your web host, transfer your domain name to a third party registrant before your web host knows that you’re dumping them. This is a crucial precaution because we do not want anything on the hands of someone that we are breaking up with!

(Sadly, some web hosts will actually impose extra cancellation fees when they are holding your domain.)

4. Let your visitors and your new web host know about your plans

First, determine when you are going to switch your web host. Preferably, pick a time when your website has the least visitors as this will minimize the negative impacts when any part of the switching process goes wrong.

Next, inform the new web host and website visitors about your plan. Why tell your new web host about the switch? To assure that immediate technical supports are available during the switch. Why tell your website visitors about the switch? To reduce negative impacts when any part of the switching process goes wrong.

5. Setup and test everything before the actual move

All the basic things such as file permissions, database connections, and application scripts should be setup and tested properly before the actual server switch. These are fundamentals and you need to get them right if you want the transferring process to be smooth.

If you are new to web design and development, I suggest you bookmark this article for further reference in future.

1. Image gallery with hover box preview

Isn’t it nice to allow your users to preview thumbnail images by just rolling their mouse over? The Hoverbox Tutorial offers free coding sample and detail guides on how to do just that. If you wish to build a fast loading image gallery then this is a must-read.

See how hoverbox image gallery can be made.

2. Style A-to-Z index like BBC

It’s tedious to deal with index files – especially when you have a lot of glossary terms. Christian Watson offers a wonderful way to organize and style your index files using simple CSS tricks.

Learn how to make your A-to-Z index file looks cool.

3. Alert Box

Creating an alert box is certainly good way to attract users’ eyeballs and make sure the users pay enough attention to the important content. Bruce shares his idea how this can be done nicely with some neat CSS code.

Learn how to create an alert message in CSS.

4. CSS Sliding Sprite Window

CSS allows you to show different images in different states of a link – Rogie’s tutorial shows how ‘dynamic’ a link can be with a little work on CSS. It’s not something new but I’m certain that it’s a good read for newbies.

Read tutorial on CSS sliding sprite window.

5. Gradient text effect using CSS purely

Stop rendering every single heading text on your website using Photoshop. There’s better way to get the job done – CSS! Not many webmasters are aware that text can be rendered using CSS. If you are one of them, read Nick La’s tutorial on how to create a gradient text effect easily with pure CSS.

Learn how to create gradient effects on text.

6. Creating a sliding image gallery

Often used in photographers’ website, the sliding image gallery is a simple yet beautiful way to organize your web images. You’ll learn how a horizontal or vertical sliding image gallery can be made in Stu Nicholls’s tutorial.

Read sliding image gallery tutorial.

7. Round corner in CSS

Greg Johnson offers more than just tutorial in making round corners using CSS; more over, he created a web apps to automated the process. With just a few clicks, you can generate the CSS and HTML you need to create anti-aliased corners without using images or javascript. (Greg also offers Spiffy Box – another great tool to create simple rounded CSS box.)

Learn how round corner can be created in pure CSS.

8. Pure CSS Line Graph

Okay I admit this is not as easy as I promised earlier in this article; but this is certainly a cool (and extraordinary) way to use CSS. Alan’s experiment demonstrates the power of css and present a way of using css a bit differently – to create a line graph. His tutorial and sample codes are as valuable as gold for experienced web designers and I strongly recommend everyone to spend some time crunching his article.

Read Alen’s guide on CSS Line Graph.

9. Pure CSS Accordion Effect

The Accordion Effect is becoming a common effects of the Web 2.0 world. We’ve seen a lot how this can be done using JavaScript frameworks but can we do this in CSS? Well the answer is yes. Learn from Rob Glazebrook how this effect can be made by only using CSS.

Learn how to create the CSS-only Accordion Effect.

10. CSS rollover buttons

Rollovers are a nice way to add visual feedback to your website’s buttons. As a visitor moves their mouse over a rollover button, it changes to indicate that it’s click-able. It looks something like the ‘Sliding Sprite Window’ we talked about earlier but the mechanics behind this is quite a difference.

Read on to learn how you can make rollover buttons in CSS

What’s a .htaccess file?

Also known as hypertext access, .htaccess file, when placed in a particular server directory, is used to customize and configure certain request to that particular directory and its sub content (directories and web files).

In layman term, .htaccess is a flexible configuration file (normally placed at server root folder) that is often used to improve website navigation and viewing experience. .htaccess file is used most frequently when a server is shared among multiple users – for instance, a server used for shared hosting plans. .htaccess file on shared hosting plan allows users to alter their site configuration (such as rewriting URLs and making redirection) without affecting others (as they are unable to access server root folder).

Usage of .htaccess file

The following are the most common uses of .htaccess file.

Redirections

Ever heard of 301 redirect or 302 redirect – these web functions are done in .htaccess. 301 and 302 redirection are especially useful when you are moving your websites or taking an old files off from your website. For example, redirect http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/old-reviews to http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/new-reviews – not only your users will be taken to a designated page when they visit the old-reviews, search engine bots will also follow the redirection and thus credited the new page with its old page rank (Google PR).

Mod Rewrite

A mod-rewrite is done whenever one wish to rewrite a web address (URL). For example you can use mod-rewrite to modify a bad URL structure (for example, URL with too many parameters – too much of $ and & symbols). Mod-rewrite is also often used to switch a non-WWW URL to WWW; example, from http://webhostingsecretrevealed.com switch to http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com.

Such URL modification is necessary as it improves users experience and avoid unnecessary technical problems with search engine. For example, by switching URL likehttp://www.example.com/rdgrt1?hym%+mobile%games to http://www,site.com/mobile-games, it shows a shorter URL to your users (hence easier to remember) and improve search engine’s crawl rate of your site.

Customization of the error responses

You can also use .htaccess show custom error responses instead of just a ’404 Not Found’ or ’403 Forbidden’ page. This improves your website image as well as users viewing experience.

Other common .htaccess usage

Some other .htaccess usage commonly used by web developers:

• Helps the server to control user agent caching to reduce bandwidth usage.
• Used for users authorization and authentication, restrict users access to certain directories on server.
• To specifies the security restrictions and information for the particular directory.
• To avoid irresponsible webmaster hot-linking images hosted at your server.

Sample of .htaccess codes

Some sample codes on .htaccess

Mod rewrite

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

Redirection

Redirect 301 /home http://www.example.com/
Redirect 301 /old-filehttp://www.example.com/new-file/

Setting directory index file

DirectoryIndex index.html index.php /index.php

File extension mapping

AddHandler php5-cgi .php .inc

Customizing error documents

ErrorDocument 404 /oops-file-not-found/
ErrorDocument 500 /oops-data-base-error/

Anti image hot-linking

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(subdomain\.)?askapache.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^.*\.(bmp|tif|gif|jpg|jpeg|jpe|png)$ – [F]

Final words on .htaccess

While .htaccess offers incredible flexibility in configuring your websites; one should note that mismanaging or misusing of .htaccess can result in performance loss as well as creating security loop holes. If you are not knowledgeable enough, make sure you ask for advice and comment from the experts before making any changes on .htaccess files.

To learn more, read further at Apache tutorials on .htaccess. In case you do not wish to write your own .htaccess file, check out Htaccess Editor, it helps users to create .htaccess files easily online.

What is a VPS?

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. Sometimes it is also referred as Virtual Dedicated Server.

When you take a server and part it into smaller independent servers where each of these smaller server runs on its own operating system and private environment but shares the same hardware – that’s what we called as VPS. A VPS is a hosting environment that combines both benefits of shared and dedicated hosting. It looks, feels, and acts like a dedicated server; but it cost a fraction of the cost of a dedicated hosting package.

VPS is most suitable for website owners that need an isolated hosting environment (for safety and performance purpose) and special hostingfeatures (such as custom firewalls, SSH access, dedicated IP addresses).

Benefits of VPS

The best things about VPS are its dedicated-server-alike features and affordable pricing.

Isolation Each private server has its unique file system and gets a  guaranteed fraction of the server’s disk space, CPU power, bandwidth, and memory. Hence, a website hosted on a VPS runs on an isolated environment where its performance will not be affected by other websites. Also, a VPS does not share web application and services with other websites thus it eliminates the risk of downtime or hacks due to other’s mistakes.

Customization VPS users get full root access. This allows server customization – you get to install your own software/application and manage your server as you would on a dedicated server.

Affordable VPS is cheap. You’ll get features like dedicated servers but cost a lot more cheaper (in most of the case, 50% less) than a dedicated hosting plan. You can compare the pricing different between a dedicated server and VPS hosting below.

What to look for when choosing a VPS?

Besides pricing, there are a few other important points that you should look at when it comes to VPS shopping. Choosing a VPS provider that’s easy to communicate is very important. A web host who’s willing to listen and accommodate your specific needs is very important.

Also, getting a flexible VPS provider that allows hardware customization is very important. Avoid web hosts who offer only ‘standard’ plans as this will creates troubles in your future upgrades. Each website has different needs, maybe you need lower CPU speeds, or larger storage, or less bandwidth, or more RAM – you’ll never know what kind of upgrades you need in the future. Do you want to upgrade your entire hosting plan everytime you need a minor upgrades? No, of course. If all you need is just some extra RAM, why should you upgrade the entire hosting plan and pay for all the unnecessary storage and bandwidth?

Is VPS right for you?

When your website has outgrown your shared hosting plan and you couldn’t afford the price of a dedicated server, then VPS is your answer. Most webmasters see VPS as the stepping stone to dedicated or self-managed private server.

Further related readings: Is dedicated server right for you?, 9 web hosting pitfalls you must avoid, and How much bandwidth do you need.

What’s dedicated hosting?

A dedicated hosting simply means the kind of hosting service where an entire computer server is leased to serve the needs of one single account.

A dedicated hosting sometimes is also known as dedicated server or managed hosting service.

Website (or websites) hosted on a dedicated hosting enjoys better flexibility and security when compare to shared hosting service. Client gets full control over the server in dedicated hosting, including bandwidth allocation, choice of server operating system, hardware specs, custom web applications, and so on.

Managing dedicated hosting

There’s no clear guidelines nor industry standards set to define the management role of dedicated server providers.

However, in most cases the server hardware is owned by the dedicated hosting providers where in some cases, they will provide support for your operating system or applications. Thus for such kind of managed dedicated hosting, users get full control on the server via web based control panel on top of a team of technical personnel readily available to handle all server and network related functions and problems. These dedicated hosting is sometimes known as the ‘manged dedicated server’.

As per listed in Wikipedia, server management can include some or all of the following:

• Operating system updates
• Application updates
• Server monitoring
• Simple Network Management Protocol hardware monitoring
• Application monitoring
• Technical support
• Firewall services
• Antivirus updates
• Security audits
• DDoS protection and mitigation
• Intrusion detection
• Backups and restoration
• Disaster recovery
• DNS hosting service
• Load balancing
• Database administration
• Performance tuning
• Software installation and configuration
• User management
• Programming consultation

Dedicated hosting providers define their level of management based on the services they provide. In comparison, fully managed could equal self managed from provider to provider.

Pros and cons of dedicated hosting

Website (or websites) hosted on a dedicated hosting enjoys better flexibility and security when compare to shared hosting service. Client gets full control over the server in dedicated hosting, including bandwidth allocation, choice of server operating system, hardware specs, custom web applications, and so on.

On the other hand, dedicated hosting is cost a lot more than the usual shared hosting. A shared hosting cost normally ranged below $10/mo; while leasing fees for dedicated hosting are over hundreds.

Price of dedicated hosting

For references, here’s the pricing for Hostgator dedicated hosting plan at time of writing. Hostgator is the only dedicated server I ever used. Although the service is a little pricey, Hostgator is doing extremely good in term of reliability as well as customer supports. They are strongly recommended if you’re looking for quality dedicated server hosting.

Hostgator dedicated hosting plans

More on Hostgator dedicated hosting.

Do keep in mind that lower price does not necessarily mean good service, although it does not necessarily mean bad service either. When shopping for a dedicated hosting, you should find out what’s your server requirements and budget range. Start reviewing each only after you had your choices narrowed down to those that fit into your list.

What you need to know to run a dedicated hosting?

Basically there’s no rocket science required for running a dedicated hosting – especially when you’re signing up with a dedicated hosting that is managed well.

Experience in WHM and CPanel is most crucial when comes to handling daily tasks with a dedicated hosting. Skills with Linux (Windows OS if you’re operating a Windows Server) would be a huge plus for sure. Also in case you’re running a e-Commerce site and process money transaction on site, knowledge in cart software is a must.

Closing: When should you take up a dedicated server?

While a dedicated hosting is much costly; in some cases, nevertheless, a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger return on investment.

Here’re situations where a (managed) dedicated server is recommended:

• Your website traffics grew so huge that shared hosting can’t handle it anymore.
• Website security is your primary concerns.
• You don’t have enough IT staffs to run your own dedicated server thus outsourcing it sounds like a better choice.

All in all, Dedicated hosting is normally recommended when the security and reliability in handling sudden traffic surge are the primary concerns. There are good reasons for dedicated hosting as well as shared hosting options. The smart move is picking up the kind of hosting that fits your needs the best.