Blogs - Tips for More Business Awareness and Profits

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 02:06:10 pm

The use of blogs as part of an Internet business is now regarded as one of the best ways to help promote websites. Blogs are seen from the search engine point of view as important as they are normally updated on a regular basis.

The use of blogs as part of an  is now regarded as one of the best ways to help promote websites. Blogs are seen from the search engine point of view as important as they are normally updated on a regular basis.

The best way to start using blogs is to focus on one niche for each blog and then to write good content on a regular basis. Once you have a reputation on a particular subject you will receive visitors wanting to read the latest posts.

Try to write informative and helpful posts that will keep visitors returning. It is a good idea to write a snippet (a short version of an article) for example with a link to the full article.

There are many sites to help promote blogs that will bring traffic to your blogs. It is normally a good way of getting  to your other websites by linking from blogs.

like blogs because they offer updated or new content that is useful to their visitors.

Whereas normal websites use keywords as a means of getting visitors. Search engines will display their results based on the keyword phrases entered and then show the most relevant pages that have those keywords in their content.

The advantage with blogs is that it is possible to use tags for posts. Tags operate in a similar way to keywords. For example if a post is made about home theater screens, then if it is posted using that tag then anyone searching on the various sites that use tags will find that post.

The big advantage to this method is that for each tag that the sites like Technorati for example will show the posts with the newest one at the top of the results shown.

So if using a very popular tag or subject then this can be a way of getting a lot of traffic.

It is also possible to receive news of the latest posts from blogs by using RSS feeds, which notifies anyone who adds your feed to their sites. This is a great way to back to your sites.

Another benefit of using blogs is that visitors can leave a message to posts made. This is a good way to interact with your visitors and can build on a good business relationship.

This is a good way to find what visitors think of your site and what type of information they may be looking for.

When you offer good content that is updated often, then visitors will also start to link to your blogs which apart from giving a feel good factor will help with search engine results.

If people start linking from high Google PR sites then this will really make a big difference in the search engines as this is regarded as an important and relevant site.

It is usually difficult to get many links from high PR sites for new sites but add good content regularly and it will become easier.

Submit RSS Feeds – Dump Tedious Feed Submission!

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 02:06:24 pm

Submitting RSS feeds to RSS directories can be a real pain for or business owners who use RSS feeds to make regular product announcements or promotional offers. Let’s explore the use of RSS feeds and why you should be using RSS submission software to submit RSS feeds.

Submitting RSS feeds to RSS directories can be a real pain for webmasters or business owners who use RSS feeds to make regular product announcements or promotional offers. When RSS technology first appeared on the internet in the late 90s, the usage is pretty limited. As time passes, RSS feeds have gained much momentum as content syndication becomes a widely accepted means to update web content. Let’s explore the use of RSS feeds and why you should be using RSS submission software to submit RSS feeds.

RSS is the abbreviation or acronym of Really Simple Syndication. RSS feeds are in XML file format which are not readable in its raw form. In order for you to view the content of the RSS feeds, you would need a reader or aggregator to do so. There are many online readers such as My Yahoo, Bloglines, NewsGator etc.

RSS feeds are primarily created to offer dynamic content, ie content that is fresh and updated. As you can see, many news press are using RSS feeds to provide their readers with the latest news in the stock market, sports and world news. Commercial companies offer feeds to subscribers as a means to announce new products, company news, or as an advertising channel. Webmasters use RSS feeds on their websites so that visitors can always read about the latest developments in the web topic or niche such as medical,  or even stock movements.

Webmasters can build RSS feeds from their web pages and submit RSS feeds to specific niche RSS directories for distribution. This is an excellent way to reach targeted audiences and gain significant traffic.  are not the only places to grab free traffic. When webmasters list their RSS feeds in the RSS feed directories, visitors to these directories may like what they are reading and visit the parent websites. On another note, interesting feeds may be syndicated by fellow webmasters in the same niche. This is invaluable since you would be getting traffic from their websites as well as get some one-way links. We all know that this would have a positive impact on your

If you are not using RSS feeds to promote your website, you are really losing out to your competitors. That said, it can be a lengthy process to submit RSS feeds for inclusion in the news or RSS feeds directories. Increasingly more webmasters are turning to RSS submission software as a solution to submit RSS feeds.

Let’s use a simple example to illustrate the benefits. Imagine that your income is 30 dollars per hour, and you need to spend about 3-5 hours to manually submit RSS feeds to about 50 – 60 feed directories. The time you lost is worth more than 100 dollars to you each time you submit a RSS feed. Multiply that by the number of websites you have and it is easy to understand why it is more economical to use RSS submission software to submit RSS feeds. Visit my blog to read more about RSS feed submission and popular and affordable RSS submission software webmasters have in their toolkit.

This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety in any ezine, newsletter, blog or website. The author’s name, bio and website links must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.

Getting Traffic to Your Blog

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 02:06:50 pm

Having a blog isn’t quite as simple as if you build it, they will come. Certainly, web crawlers such as Google will eventually pick up on your content and may return a link to your weblog if someone searches for relevant keywords, but there are more surefire ways to get your blog noticed…

First, it’s critical that your blog content is valuable to your audience - you should know your members or audience and have some idea of what they will want to read. Your aim is to inform, entertain or otherwise engage your audience to such an extent that they will be inclined to return on a daily basis (or at least frequently) to see what you have to say.

Finally, it’s important to understand the concept of popularity on the Internet. Quite simply, the more links to your web content there are on the Internet, the more people will find you through  and other websites.

Listed below are a couple of enterprising ways to accomplish that:

Track Backs and Link Backs
Start by using your own web pages to link back to your blog. Post comments on other website’s blogs. Link to hot topics and comments in other blogs. A little effort from you will be reciprocated with links from others.

Blog Carnivals
Blog carnivals are like magazines. They gather links to blogs on the same topics and publish an edition (an article) of a blog carnival on a particular topic, offering commentary on the various blog articles mentioned. The editor or organizer of the carnival chooses how often the edition is published and people subscribe to topics they’re interested in. and blog rings work in a similar manner.

Blog Search Engines
Imagine Google for the blogosphere. By using specific tags, your blog and its contents become easier to find by one of the blog traffic providers.

Pinging
A Ping is when you set up your blog so that people tracking your blog get instant notification every time you update the blog. Whichever blog system you’re using, you simply set up your preferences to notify specific blog tracking sites whenever your
blog has fresh content.

Blogging isn’t a difficult task to learn, but the upkeep of providing constant content can have a draining effect on you if  you’re already pressed for time. Make sure your audience knows how often you’ll commit to updating your blog, and then find a way to have several weeks or more of blog entries readily available when you need them.

Bringing the RSS Revolution to Your Desktop

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 02:06:18 pm

The aggregation of RSS feeds is expanding exponentially, to the point that an estimated 75.3 million people currently use this news channeling system on a regular basis.

Until recently, the vast amount of news and other information available on the World Wide Web was accessible only by manually browsing for specific content via .  RSS (Really Simple Syndication) represents an information revolution that turns this concept around by actively syndicating content on an ever growing number of websites.  RSS content is transmitted over the Web via “feeds� covering an extensive range of topics and interests, from general news coverage to breaking bulletins in sports, business, science, politics, the arts, and countless other fields.  Users subscribe to the RSS feeds available from an increasing number of websites and receive frequent updates in their selected fields of interest via an “RSS reader� or “aggregator� that continuously gathers news from RSS-capable sites and translates it into text and links for review on-demand.

The aggregation of RSS feeds is expanding exponentially, to the point that an estimated 75.3 million people currently use this news channeling system on a regular basis.  Our daily lives are constantly influenced by one source of news or another, but mainstream news media channels are often accused of biased reporting that is tainted by special interest groups.  RSS feeds are not subject to censorship or news filtering and one must be aware that the information provided must be analyzed carefully just as is also true of the mainstream media, but the concept still empowers individuals to have as much of a voice as the media conglomerates.

RSS aggregators typically appear in the same basic format as a web browser page displaying a list of articles and links from feeds to which the user has subscribed.  There are dozens of aggregators available to which users can turn to review the latest updates.   When active, these aggregators dominate the desktop, making it necessary to set aside other applications to catch up on the latest news.

In a breakthrough development that brings the RSS news and information revolution to the next level, the upstart team at Netsplorer.com has created a powerful application that presents RSS feeds via an unobtrusive newsreader that scrolls directly on the desktop.  While still under heavy testing, the team anticipates unleashing this remarkable application in early November 2006.  The Netsplorer NewsReader™ will be completely customizable, not only appearing at either the top or the bottom of the screen, but also scrolling at a fully adjustable speed and transparency that makes it highly user friendly.  The Netsplorer NewsReader™  not only allows the user to scroll news information directly from such mainstream news feeds as CNN and the BBC, it is also capable of adding and displaying the feed from any RSS subscription, all scrolling across the desktop in clickable links that open an associated web page at the click of a mouse.   For those who like to keep close track of their investments, the Netsplorer NewsReader™  also will distinguish itself by allowing users to display continuously updated delayed quotes and links to breaking news on their favorite stocks.

Netsplorer™ also provides a groundbreaking approach to RSS article posting.   Previously, those who wished to submit their own articles for posting to a potential readership of millions of RSS users needed to go through many different syndication channels to achieve distribution over hundreds of separate feeds.  Netsplorer™ offers the potential to deliver this original content from its own web portal.

The Netsplorer NewsReader™ can also be custom branded or co-branded for any organization that wishes to provide targeted news to its customers, members, investors or other interested parties.   The Netsplorer NewsReader™  can be custom-branded to display the organization’s own logo, provided that the statement, “Powered by Netsplorer.com� is included in their marketing and distribution campaigns.  This unique capability allows companies and other groups to provide their custom-branded version of the Netsplorer NewsReader™ free of charge to their clients, providing a direct link to their target market along with free end user access to the entire worldwide collection of RSS feeds.

The Netsplorer News Reader™ is certified to contain no spyware or adware.  The Netsplorer NewsReader™ will be available as a freeware download from Netsplorer.com.  The company has set its goal on distributing the free Netsplorer™ application to millions of desktops worldwide within the next twelve months.

RSS

Posted by rimel - 20/06/07 at 02:06:34 pm

To uninformed Internet users, RSS may seem to be a set of letters that could scare them away. But it doesn’t.

To uninformed Internet users, RSS may seem to be a set of letters that could scare them away.  But it doesn’t.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  It could also mean Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary that allows Internet users to send information through “feeds” that show up either in an RSS reader or other e-mail programs.

The RSS is also known as web feed formats in XML (also known as , which lets users identify information more accurately and flexibly) and is commonly used for web syndication.

Through the RSS, users can receive new content and allow them to easily subscribe to the latest contents of the website you’re interested in.  By doing so, users will be able to control the rate and volume of data that they will receive online.  That way, people who use the Internet on a regular basis can do away with problems related to heavy usage, like gathering and distributing news, and increasing site traffic.

Using RSS also lets you save time because you no longer need to visit the sites of your choice individually.  And what’s more, your privacy is ensured because you don’t have to sign up for the newsletters being offered by your favorite sites.

History

It was UserLand which first used RSS in 1997.  Other Internet giants like Netscape followed shortly after.

But before RSS was fully developed, other similar forms — like Backweb and Pointcast — of syndication already existed.  However, none of these were able to attain the popularity RSS is enjoying now because most of them were designed to work for only a single service.

RSS’ first version — the RDF Site Summary of RSS 0.9 — was created by Netscape’s Dan Libby in March 1999 for the My Netscape portal.  This was modified four months later to incorporate suggestions from users.

However, Netscape lost interest in the RSS/XML at a time when its use became widespread.  This abandonment of some sorts prompted various users to set up a working group and mailing list just to keep the usage of RSS going. Since then, several modifications have been introduced to make RSS better.

How it works

To make RSS work, a website owner maintains a standard list of notifications, commonly called the RSS Feed, on their site.

The RSS Feed allows users interested on the particular site to find out what’s new or what have been changed by simply checking out the list.  One can then automatically access the list and have it organized with the help of special computer programs known as the RSS aggregators.

The next thing you need to do is to start producing an RSS feed, a feature now commonly provided in websites especially of major news organizations.

Once you have an RSS feed, it’s already very easy to provide the basic information — all arranged chronologically — that your frequent website visitors would need.

The items found on the list contain a title that would describe the item, a detailed description and a link to the web page that contains the actual information you initially stated.  There are times, however, that the detailed description is already the actual information of the website.

Why RSS?

When frequent visitors to your website know you are using RSS feeds, it gives them a sense of  knowing that you are concerned about their privacy.

This is made possible by the RSS’ incorruptible opt-in feature, where consumers are always given the last say on whether they want to subscribe to a specific RSS feed.

Another good thing about RSS feeds is that it allows you to save time in , in the same way that new technology does for both marketers and consumers.  This is the case especially when coming up with a subject line for the feed.  It has to be worded in such a way that it would catch the attention of your users.

Finally, the good thing about RSS feeds is that they are measurable, in different ways, though, in the same manner that there are different ways of telling whether an e-mail has been read or not.

Hosting Plan Features And Popular Web Hosting Control Panels

Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 01:06:31 pm

Here is what you should look for in hosting plan features:

Often hosting plan features are tied into the type of control panel that is provided with the hosting service. Most people take for granted that a control panel should be part of the package, but in smaller countries outside the USA this is often a ‘luxury’ that is not part of the hosting package!

Finding out whether your hosting server provider offer a control panel to manage your website is the first essential feature that you should look for. It is unacceptable to sign up for a hosting package if there is no control panel!

Common control panels for Linux hosting are (my recommendation is to go for Linux hosting and not Windows hosting):

  • Helm
  • Plesk
  • Cpanel
  • DirectAdmin

    • All these control panels have their supporters and detractors.

    I have to honestly say that my preference is CPanel. Cpanel offers a lot of functionality and a user friendly interface.

    The following features are available with CPanel hosting:

    ~ Email management ~

    Under email management you can create and delete all your email accounts. You also have access to a Webmail facility so that you can read your email online (as opposed to linking to your email account with Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express). You can also set up forwarders to forward one email account to another. You also have access to set up simple autoresponders to send an automated reply back if anyone sends an enquiry email to a specific email address.

    ~ Website statistics ~

    Although most hosting providers do provide statistics facilities, it is worthwhile to make sure that they do. Some hosting providers think that the statistics programs consume too many resources on a shared environment and some of them therefore remove the facility. But statistics and the ability to analyze your traffic is essential when you set up a website, so make sure that you select a hosting provider that do provide you access to a web stats package. My personal favourite is AWStats. You can read an article on the different types of statistics programs as well as how to interpret your statistics here : http://www.tm4y.co.za/internet-marketing-tips/website-statistics.html

    ~ FTP ~

    You should have FTP access to your website in order to upload files. This is absolutely essential if you want to manage your website. Cpanel also allows you to register new FTP accounts to give other people access to your website. You can restrict their access to specific folders on your website and specify if they should have read and/or write access.

    ~ File manager ~

    If you are not comfortable with using an FTP package to upload your files, you can always use the file manager available in CPanel. The file manager enables you to upload files, unzip files on the server and to copy and delete files.

    ~ Backups ~

    This allows you to make a backup of the files on your server, as well as to backup your MySQL database if you have one. This is very useful and should be done regularly. You cannot depend on the backups ran by the hosting service provider, since the service provider itself might just close its doors unexpectedly and you might not have access to your site - not to talk of your backups!

    ~ Subdomains and Add On Domains ~

    You can add sub domains and even Add On domains (depending on whether your hosting provider allows for this)

    ~ Redirects ~

    This is useful to temporarily or permanently redirect pages to another website or ther website pages. Be careful though with using temporary redirects, this might cause problems with the search engines.

    ~ Protect directories ~

    You can set up password protected directories on your website

    ~ Pre-installed scripts ~

    The Fantastico installer is one of the best features of the Cpanel control panel! This installer helps you to quickly and easily install lots of Open Source (in other words, free to use) tools and utilities, such as shopping carts, forums, project management tools, WIKIS and much more.

    The CPanel control panel allows web hosting companies to make a lot of web hosting plan features available to clients who can then easily manage these features themselves.

    Google’s Personalized Results

    Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 01:06:06 pm

    wo years ago, Google presented a personalized homepage for account holders. This weekend, it officially rolled out personalized search results as a member service.

    Now appearing on Google account pages, a prompt-box reads: “New! Google services will now be more personalized with Google Accounts.

    Google account holders, (those with Google Toolbar, Bookmarks, Gmail, AdWords, and other Google member-based appliances) will now, by default, see results tailored to their own unique search histories whenever they are signed in to their accounts.

    Editorial Note: Drop by the SiteProNews Blog to read regular posts by two of the Web’s top writers, Jim Hedger and Jerry Bader, or listen to The Alternative on WebMaster Radio, the new weekly, hour-long live broadcast hosted by Jim Hedger, covering the world of independent search engine alternatives and, of course, developments at the Big 3.

    Personalization will subtly skew results in favour of documents or URLs visited regularly by individual users. If, for example, a user tends to visit a popular travel site when booking tickets and accommodation, results from that site are more likely to rank prominently in relevant travel related keyword queries.

    “Personalized Search is part of Google’s ongoing effort to make your search experience more relevant to you. Using Personalized Search, you can:

  • Get the results most relevant to you, based on what you’ve searched for in the past
  • View and manage your past searches, including the webpages, images, news headlines and Froogle results you’ve clicked on
  • Create bookmarks you can access from any computer

    • Personalized Search orders your search results based on your past searches, as well as the search results and news headlines you’ve clicked on. You can view all these items in your Search History and remove any items you’d like.

    Early on, you may not notice a huge impact on your search results, but as you build up your search history, your personalized search results will continue to improve.”

    Google is drawing user information from Google Search History, Google Bookmarks, and personalized Google homepages. A note on a Google Accounts page says they are not using personal information gleaned from Gmail or AdWords accounts. Though not used to affect personalized results, Google is also storing search results from Google Image Search, Google News, Froogle, Google Video and Google Maps in the Search History file of its individual users.

    Being logged into any Google account triggers personalized results. Also, signing up for a new Google a from

    Personalization will alter the search results seen by unique users over time though people might not notice a huge difference in the first weeks. As a person’s search history accumulates data, search references will increasingly show frequently visited sites and references to sites that share common links with pages in the user’s search history and those of similar users.

    For the SEO industry, the implications of personalization are both stark and subtle. While the trend towards regionalization has limited clear standards for judging overall Google rankings for the past few years, the advent of personalized results makes the standard website ranking report somewhat useless.

    Personalization pretty much kills the ambitions of the simplest SEO shops. Successful SEO campaigns will nevër again be measured by strong rankings. SEOs will come to think about their services in a very different way than many do today. It’s no longer about making a document or site rank high on results pages, it’s now about making them rank well consistently.

    Optimization techniques for personalized search results will include expertise in site usability, visitor retention, traffic funneling, bookmarking and social tagging, all of which entered the unwritten book of SEO best practices over the past few years. It will also involve a stronger dedication to content creation, document upkeep and overall resourcefulness.

    Site usability has a direct effect on visitor retention. Websites with easily accessed, high quality information will likely see visitors stay on site longer and come back more frequently. Similarly, websites that move visitors from one page to the next in a logical fashion should (logically) tend to score better in personalized result sets. As Google records the number of times a specific user visits a site, those a person visits most often will score better placements in that user’s personalized results.

    Google Bookmarking, or prompting specific users to add a site or document to their Google Bookmark file, will become an integral tool for SEOs. Google draws information from Google Bookmarks to develop personalized sets of search results for each user.

    Google supports its own custom bookmark system and stores individual user’s bookmark files on its own servers. Getting users to add a site to their Google Bookmarks file isn’t as simple as adding a Ctrl+D Internet Explorer “Bookmark Us” link, though adding that link is strongly advised. There are extensions available allowing individuals to copy their IE or Firefox bookmarks into Google Bookmarks.

    A more direct Google Bookmarking method involves prompting visitors to include a RSS feed from your site to their personalized version of Google’s homepage by placing an Add to Google button on the website. Another direct method is to use the Google Gadgets API to create customized content-feeds that visitors can add to their unique personalized Google homepage.

    Please note, none of these methods actually gets a site or document into individual Google Bookmark files directly but serves to steer users towards including them. The last two will put site content directly on an individual user’s Google homepages.

    Does personalization mark the end of the spider? Absolutely not. Personalized results will rely heavily on data accumulated by Google’s bots as they analyze content between linked sites. The inclusion of one document in several people’s Google Bookmarks files will strengthen the chances that other documents sharing links from the one in several Bookmarks files will appear in those user’s personalized results. Personalization will have a beneficial effect on the ethical side of the link building industry, starting with an immediate growth providing social search link building and bridging services.

    As Google scans sites in its users search history and bookmark files, it will follow links it finds there. Many of those documents will also appear in that user’s search history or bookmark files. They will also appear in the search histories and bookmarks of other users with similar search histories. Those documents are likely to fare well in searches conducted by numerous other users because Google will spot the shared interest by following links and matching search histories against each other.

    Google will also be better able to spot and eradicate link sp@m by enabling Google to better analyze how individual users treat links as they come across them. Given the vast majority of users will tend to stray away from obvious sp@m, and links that do not get clicked will be less useful as time goes on, much of the incentive to try to manipulate results with spammy links is removed.

    In all, Google’s move towards presenting personalized search engine results will likely create a better search experience for its users. Though there are a wide array of privacy concerns Google will have to weave its way through and several assurances it will have to make, the creation of a truly effective personalized search engine ranks among the holy grails of geekdom for AI enthusiasts. This week, they took a big step forward. It will be interesting to see where this step leads us.

    A Hosting Review Can Help You Find The Right Web Hosting Provider

    Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 01:06:59 pm

    A hosting review in a web hosting guide can help you find the right host.

    If you do a search in Google for ‘Web Hosting’ or ‘Hosting’, the first couple of results that come up are surprisingly enough, not those of actual web hosting companies, but rather web hosting review sites.

    These sites are an excellent resource to assist you with making a decision regarding which web host to choose for your foray into the world of the Internet.

    A web hosting guide can help you compare the services being offered by different hosting companies. This is a big advantage because you don’t have to visit different sites to obtain details. You can log on to a single site and compare services by bandwidth, by price or by disk space.

    The other important advantage that these sites offer is that most of them offer a rating service and the opportunity for clients to post comments or reviews. These comments reveal a lot about a hosting company!

    Do not be too alarmed though if you find some reviews that are very negative - it is just not possible for a hosting company to be perfect. They WILL make mistakes. The important thing is to try and ascertain how well they recovered or how well they handled their customer service when the problem occurred.

    To get the most out of these sites, you need to know what to search for. Some of the newer sites have more refined ways of offering search criteria - you should be able to search on operating system (e.g. Linux or Windows), disk space, bandwidth, price, control panel, features etc.

    You therefore need to know how much bandwidth you require, how much hard disk space you require and maybe even have made a decision up front whether you are looking for Linux or Windows hosting.

    Once you have decided about what you need, you can start searching for a hosting service. You can use one of the popular search engines, like Google or Yahoo to find a suitable web hosting review site.

    Log on to the site and compare the different packages. See which packages or bundled services meet your needs best. Check and compare the specifications of the hardware being offered by the hosting services. Eliminate the hosting services that don’t meet your requirements and send the remaining hosts a list of questions. The questions you ask are not so important, but you will get an idea about how prompt the hosts are in responding to your queries. This can then become a useful benchmark. You can reject those who take too long to answer.

    Finally you need to test connectivity. Visit a few sites hosted on the servers of companies that you have short listed. Check the download speeds. Eliminate ones that take too long to open. You should also check on the web hosting review site whether they have any uptime statistics. This will also give you a good idea what type of downtime your website might experience.

    Be careful not to select on price only - cheapest is not always the best! Rather look at the average prices and go for a hosting provider that rather offers a middle of the road type of price rather than the absolute cheapest. Another important point to look out for is to see how long the company has been in business!

    Cheap Web Hosting is Shared Web Hosting

    Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 01:06:34 pm

    Lots of people are looking for cheap hosting solutions. It is also true that the price of hosting has decreased over the past few years. It is now more affordable than ever to host your website. One should be careful however, of opting for the very cheapest that you can find. Most often, these providers do overselling. This basically works on almost the same principle as airlines that do overbooking. Because airlines realise that about 10% to 15% of people who book their tickets will actually never make it to the plane, the allow overbooking of tickets of up to 10%.

    The trouble comes when EVERYONE decides to pitch up and use their tickets. That is when you get long queues, grumbling passengers and air hostesses that seem to have smiles pasted onto their faces….

    The problem is that hosting providers often sell large amounts of hard disk space and bandwidth for very cheaply, knowing full well that you will never use the space. The problem comes in when everyone starts unexpectedly using all their space and bandwidth allocated to them. Then everyone suffers.

    But let’s look at the principles of shared hosting - what it is and who it works for.

    ~Shared Hosting~

    Shared hosting is the best solution for most small and medium websites. The most important advantage is cost. Shared hosting is much cheaper and affordable than hosting on dedicated servers.

    Even though in theory you should just sign up for the features that you will really need and thereby avoid paying extra costs, the truth is that web hosting packages are really becoming more and more feature rich while becoming cheaper at the same time. You will therefore GET a lot of features whether you need them or not. This is not a bad thing since it does mean that you can easily upgrade your account or install new software when you find that you are requiring more functionality than when you started.

    Shared hosting is also good for web hosting companies. It can host hundreds of small and medium websites on a single server. This reduces the installation and maintenance costs, and gives the hosting company a higher return on investment.

    Because of the danger of overselling however, you should ensure that the company uses state-of-the art servers with high processing power. These servers should be connected to the Internet on high speed bandwidth lines so that there is no choking when the traffic spurts. Most of these companies do advertise the type of servers that they use. If they do not disclose their server specifications, it might be better to steer away from them. Ask a friend, family member or Internet expert for assistance in trying to understand which servers are good and which are not.

    You should be able to upgrade easily between packages should the need arise to move to a larger server or more bandwidth.

    The web host must also offer 24×7 toll-free technical support rendered by experienced and professionally trained technicians.

    You especially need to check whether the hosting company owns servers or is reselling hosting solutions. The latter situation is not conducive for your needs because the web host is only a middleman and is not in control of the solutions that he is selling. You may find that the services provided are not in keeping with the promises made.

    ~Your exit strategy~

    You must always have a backup plan in case your web host goes bankrupt. This should include maintaining a backup of all your data you post on the web site. You should not depend on the backups done by the hosting company themselves but should make sure that you run your own backups through the control panel (and you definitely SHOULD have a control panel!)

    This is also why you should always register your domain name with an independent registrar and not with the hosting company itself, since if they do go bankrupt, you might not only lose your website content, but your complete domain.

    Dedicated Hosting Services and Virtual Private Servers (VPS Hosting)

    Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 01:06:47 pm

    Let’s recap the different types of hosting services that are available:

    1. Free web hosting - these are normally sponsored through advertising. A no-no if you are serious about hosting your website for business purposes.

    2. Shared hosting - shared hosting is the most common type of hosting available today. This is most commonly used if you are running a small website or are just starting out.

    3. VPS hosting (Virtual Private Servers) - this is the poor man’s dedicated server. With VPS hosting the hosting provider partitions one server into multiple private spaces. You are therefore still sharing a server with other clients, but you get your own private ’slice’ of this server. This means that your website performance will not be affected by the other clients sharing the same server since each client has his own virtual private space in which they run. Clients that host on VPS servers therefore has access to the same type of services normally only afforded by dedicated hosting technology

    4. Dedicated hosting services are needed by clients with large websites that generate high volumes of traffic. There are also some companies which need huge storage space, and are not willing to share space with smaller companies but with the price of hardware and hard disks coming down in recent years, the more common reason to require a dedicated server these days are more to do with bandwidth usage and performance.

    In both these cases, dedicated hosting providers the solution. Instead of sharing space on a shared server or even with a Virtual Private Server, you will lease an entire dedicated machine that is pre-configured for your requirements. Hosting companies that offer dedicated hosting are often larger and more established than companies that only offer shared hosting. Small web hosts often do not have the financial or technical muscle to provide dedicated hosting.

    Web hosting companies that make provision for dedicated servers need to make a considerable investment in hardware and software, and because the client has full control over what type of software should be run on these machines, the hosting company also requires more investment in training and skills development of their staff. The hosting company also needs to make provision to stay up to date with the latest developments in hardware and software. The web host therefore needs to upgrade technology regularly to be able to provide state-of-the-art equipment.

    Remember that the advantages of dedicated hosting is that the client does not control the hardware and basic software that is required to run the server, nor does the client have to employ any technical resources to maintain the hardware and software - this is completely the responsibility of the dedicated hosting provider.

    This is why dedicated hosting costs considerably more than shared hosting or even VPS hosting. The cost can range between $99 to $2500 per month depending on which hosting company you deal with and depending on the client requirements. The cost will also be determined by the type of service contract that will be put in place between the client and the hosting company. Such a contract is commonly called a Service Level Agreement and it spells out the requirements of the client to a low level of detail. These requirements normally cover issues such as bandwidth usage, the required up-time of the server, scheduled maintenance slots and so on. The higher the required level of support from the hosing provider, the more expensive the monthly rental contract will be.

    In some cases the client would do some of the management of the server himself (this is called un-managed hosting). In this case the hosting provider will only provide the physical server and infrastructure (e.g. network connectivity, storage space etc). In this case the actual management and monitoring of the servers are the responsibility of the client and this type of dedicated hosting should be on the cheaper side of dedicated hosting costs. It must be remembered then though that the client must make provision for employing technical staff to maintain the servers.