Do You Need A Dedicated Server?

For most website owners, a shared web hosting plan will be perfectly serviceable for their needs. This means that you share a server with many other websites – websites unaffiliated to your own website, and the link is untraceable also. It’s cheaper, efficient and these shared servers can handle medium to large sites without difficulty.

However, if you are trying to run your site on a shared server that is too small to host your site, you’ll notice quickly. For a start, loading times on your site will fall dramatically, and you’ll probably start to lose visitor numbers, too. You will also experienced a slow down of uploading times to the server, making your site a pain to update, and server crashes will become a more frequent worry. If any of this sounds familiar, you may need to consider a dedicated server.

Rather than sharing your server with other users, a dedicated server works exactly as the name suggested: the server is dedicated to your site, and yours alone. Transferring a big site to a dedicated server will eliminate all of the aforementioned problems, and your site will load and run quickly once again.

As you would expect given the nature of the service being provided, dedicated servers are more expensive than their shared counterparts. Costs vary, but anything around $70 to $120 per month is a usual pricing structure for a dedicated server.

Before you make this outlay, you need to ensure you really need it. If you make money on your site and rely on it, you cannot afford for the down time that a shared server may bring. If, however, your site is just a hobby, it may be worth exploring other alternatives first.

The Dangers of Relying On Your Website Host To Back Up

Many a web hosting company attracts clients based on their promise of nightly, weekly or monthly back ups of the sites you host with them. These back ups are usually a key selling point for many consumers, who like the security it brings. In the event of a server crash, your site will be protected no matter what, and restoring it should be simple.

Mostly, web host companies back ups are a good thing – they provide stability and allow the website owner to relax. However, these packages do promote laziness; and many a business owner ceases to create their own back up files when they know their web hosting company are doing it too. This is a dangerous trap to get in to; while no one is looking to discourage you from buying a hosting plan that includes back ups by the web hosts, you should be aware of the continued necessity to create your own copies, too.

Web hosting companies are usually reliable. However, in the case of a server crash and you needing to restore your site from nothing, you don’t want to take any chances. You definitely don’t want to discover they have been reneging on their side of the deal, and have not been making back ups, after you’ve lost your site.

There’s no real way to verify your site is being backed up beyond requesting copies of those back ups. Some web hosts will do this, but even if they do, always keep making your own back up copies of your website – without fail.

See Through The Jargon of Web Host Advertising

Learning to understand advertising jargon is essential whenever you are looking to buy a service or product. The process of “selling” themselves to the consumer is no different for web hosting companies; everyone wants your business, and they’re prepared to promise you the world in an attempt to get it.

Spotting web hosting companies advertising jargon is fairly simple. The most obvious ruse is used on pricing.

For example, a company may bill their web hosting as “$9.99 per month” – which may sound like a good deal. Many people starting up with their own website will like the idea of paying monthly for their web hosting, as it is less of an financial outlay initially.

However, in most cases, the “per month” figure is just the year figure divided by 12 – you still have to pay up front for an entire year, which in this case would be $119.88. That is a substantial financial outlay; and by that point, you might be ‘sold’ on other aspects of the plan and will just go ahead and pay it – even though you may be able to find cheaper elsewhere. The initial low figure of “per month” is used to attract the eye and drag you in, and then hit you with the full price when you don’t expect it.

Always watch out any asterisk use in web hosting advertising. Most companies will cram the truth of what they are offering underneath the main sales text; so if you see asterisks, go and find their corresponding section in the terms and conditions. That way, you’ll always be immune to flashy advertising banners, and will get a better deal because of it.

Avoid Web Hosting Nightmares By Shopping Around

When you are running your own website for the first time, it is something of a rite of passage and what you want more than anything is for things to go smoothly. However, the old problem exists that those who are in something for the first time will find themselves facing a confusing situation, which can easily lead to them making the wrong decision. One place you can’t afford a bad decision is in your choice of web host.

A quick hunt around the Internet with the search term “Worst web host” and “web hosting nightmares” throws up some quite illuminating information. While the hosts themselves must remain nameless on this site, there are endless stories of awful tech support (not being able to get through, having an impossible time getting anything fixed when you eventually do get through, and plain rude staff), of unscheduled downtime, and in the case of one host porn being placed on the servers.

If you are paying for web hosting, you have the right to expect that it will do what it is sold as doing. Therefore, it is advisable to shop around for a host that offers what you need (in terms of bandwidth, pricing and customer support) and then looking for independent testimonials on the Internet. Don’t be put off by one story of poor service, but if it becomes a theme you should begin to wonder why that is. You’re entitled to expect good service, and if they can’t supply that they are no use to you.

Website Monitoring Services – A Worthwhile Investment?

Having paid for web hosting, you will naturally want to make sure that you are getting what you paid for. If your hosting service is not giving you the amount of working time that you expect from it, you are entitled to know why, and to find this out as soon as it happens. You cannot constantly be sat monitoring your site – and if you have more than one, this is impossible anyway, so it may be a good idea to pay for a dedicated website monitoring service that will constantly check the status of your site.

The way this works is that dedicated software is used to access your site once every three minutes (the time may vary, but the principle is the same with all services of this nature). As long as the service gets the response it is expecting – an active website – it will take no further action, and simply check again as soon as the time period has elapsed. When it gets a message saying that the site is down, it checks again seconds later using a different IP address. If it gets the same response, it will contact you.

Generally, this will be done by means of a mobile device such as a cell phone or a pager, and will be a short message telling you that your website is down. If this is during an already advertised period of downtime, there is nothing more you need to do. If not, then you can contact your hosting service alerting them to the fact, and get the problem fixed as quickly as possible.