Factors to be Considered while Selecting the Windows Hosting Service

Windows Hosting Services

Creating a website is an effective tool for promotion of any business. The portal also helps in generating higher brand awareness and to tap the potential of global clients. However, this portal does need to be hosted using web hosting services, before it is accessible worldwide. Making the right hosting choice could be a tough decision, due to the options available in the market today. Stability of a website, 24x7 online presence and consequently, success of the online business would depend on the type and quality of web hosting.

Choosing proper web hosting services

At the beginning, the online business owner has to decide which type of web server would be most suitable as per his company requirements, especially in terms of  disk volume and  available bandwidth. In a small business, for example, basic web hosting services are adequate. Shared server plans, wherein data is stored on a server location common to other clients as well, are inexpensive and sufficient for the above type of business. A medium-sized business may require a dedicated hosting plan, while cloud servers are best for large businesses.

In order to take care of complex web applications, which need a resourceful web environment, a shared hosting plan would not be suitable. In such a case, reputed companies sign up for Virtual Private Servers (VPS) hosting. Each VPS account has its own operating system, along with resources to ensure its isolation from other projects and data security.

Windows hosting compared to Linux hosting

After choosing the hosting server, the next step is to choose an appropriate operating system. Two solutions are most commonly used here, namely windows hosting and linux hosting. The choice to be made here is not very challenging, since the operating system depends on programming language and scripts in use for creation of websites. For example, if based on ASP or ASP.NET scripts and other Microsoft products, Windows becomes an obvious choice. But if web projects have been created using PHP, Perl, CGI, Python and similar open-source technologies, Linux assures optimum compatibility and performance.

In general, each and every company or business cannot manage its own IT staff and infrastructure, which implies that management-based web hosting services are more economical for them. Typically, the hosting company takes up complete responsibility for all technical processes such as initial server setup, reboots, configurations, application installation, security patches, checking the server performance, ports security as well as virus protection. On the other hand, if there are adequate resources to manage IT staff who would ensure appropriate server management as well as maintenance, then it is not necessary to pay extra money for managed services. This way, the virtual environment always remains under the company's control.

How to choose Professional Web Hosting Services provider for medium sized business

Web Hosting Services

An official or business website is the first thing that catches the attention of your customers. No matter how small or big an organization is, it is essential to have a credible and user friendly website to get an edge over competitors. It's not only an inexpensive business tool, but also marks the internet presence of the company irrespective of its size. Having a strong web presence helps in the expansion of your business and easily provides information about your company profile and its portfolio to potential customers. Moreover prospects who visit your business site, have specific interest in your services, and a user-friendly website can make a lot of difference to your business. A fast and reliable web hosting service is very important factor for a website to be successful. Therefore, it's highly advisable to go with a professional web hosting service provider that can guarantee your site with high uptime.

When it comes to choosing an efficient and reliable web hosting provider, it is advisable to explore your options well. Before making any decision, it is imperative to know your company's business requisites. Furthermore, it is important to know what to expect from an enterprise web hosting services. Small and medium enterprises, which have limitation on resources, must pay special attention while making a decision on web hosting provider. The hosting server must be strong enough to handle the sudden increase in the traffic. Also, while choosing the web hosting provider it is better to opt for someone who has been in the market for the longest duration and has good experience. Some of parameters which must be taken into consideration before finalising the service provider include uptime equal to or in excess of 99.9% and efficient 24x7 customer support to meet customer needs quickly. To host an e-commerce site, it's highly recommended to choose a professional web hosting service, as excess downtime can seriously hurt your business.

Design and development is also a major factor for a business website. A professional website builder must understand the marketing strategy of the business and design the website accordingly. The web designer and programmers should offer simple and easy to use web interface to make your site user-friendly. Choosing an efficient website builder is as challenging as choosing the right web hosting service.

For small and medium enterprises, it is very crucial to have a website that has high uptime so that potential customers are not diverted to competitors. It is preferable to lay emphasis on factors like after-sale service, customer service and uptime assurance for complete peace of mind. Enterprise web hosting can be the right choice for small and medium sized businesses. Also, if the company is a start-up, it's better to choose a service provides who has expertise in domain registration, web design as well as web hosting, to get every solution under one roof.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/web-hosting-articles/how-to-choose-professional-web-hosting-services-provider-for-medium-sized-business-6438729.html

Tips for building a Website for college students

Build a Website

The key to having an effective marketing presence these days is to take a 360 degree approach, which includes active online presence as well. Having an online domain helps not only organisations and institutions to reach out to a large audience, but it can also help college students in a big way. Building and hosting a personal website may seem a tedious task, however, by keeping certain guidelines in mind it becomes quite easy. The only requirement is to do some online research and then decide on a professional website builder who understands your requirements well.

The website name is the first thing that should be decided upon and registered before starting the development work. It should be crisp and must have relevance with the content that will be hosted on the website. The website name should provide an overview and make it obvious as to who are the target audience. Ideal website names are usually easy to spell, easy to remember and contain no special characters. It is advisable to have a domain name ending with .COM. However, in case the .COM domain is unavailable, students can choose other available domains such as .net, or country specific domains such as .us, .au, .in etc.

Once the website name has been decided upon, the next step is web hosting. It plays a major role in running a website without encountering any problem. Thus, it is essential to opt for professional web hosting providers as they will provide best services that will help in the optimal performance of the website. The factors that come into play while deciding upon a web hosting service provider are the reliability of their servers such as uptime record, tariff plan and other technical features offered by them. It is always recommended to go for enterprise web hosting as it offers uninterrupted and reliable services. The enterprise hosting refers to those service providers, which offer big web portals using a dedicated server.

After deciding on a professional web hosting service provider, next step is to design and develop the website. As an Internet marketing expression says 'Content is King', it is suggested that design and content must justify with the vision of the website. In this case, it is always advisable to hire a professional website builder, who will be able to develop a comprehensive web portal with desired functions and features. A website for college students should be developed accordingly, targeting the niche audience and providing relevant information about the institution along with the future prospect.

The next thing to bear in mind is the accessibility of the website. With more and more people opting to access the Internet and browsing websites on the go using their smartphones, it is only beneficial to make the website mobile friendly. Thus, it is advisable to choose a website builder who has the necessary expertise in the area. Responsive web design is another solution, which aligns the hosted content according to the size of the display it is opened on. Keeping these points in mind, it is quite easy to get a website up and running that will be able to garner more traffic and prove to be beneficial for the college students for their personal life and career.

It is easy to migrate from Linux to Windows hosting platform?

Web Hosting Services

Linux and Windows are two operating systems which sever different intended purposes. There are many versions of the Linux and Windows. When you decide for website hosting services the service provider may offer you both the operating system and you may choose any one of them depending on your needs. Even if you are working on Windows on your PC it makes no difference which hosting plan you choose- you can choose a Linux hosting also. Your decision should be based on two factors- one , what are the objectives of your website and two, what tools you have to build your website. Both the operating systems have their advantages and disadvantages before we know whether migrating from Linux hosting to Windows hosting would be easy or not.

Linux platform
It is an open source version of the Unix and has been extremely popular with the corporate because it is reliable, cost effective and stable. Many applications and utilities are available to be used free on Linux platform. The languages like PHP, Python and Perl etc. Can be used free of cost. It also supports Postgres and MySQL databases. If you do not want to use Windows based applications it is always better to use Linux. Most web hosting services charge less for Linux in comparison to the Windows hosting.

Windows platform
It is the platform and the costs are involved to host your website on this platform. Not only the operating system but almost all the other applications are not free to use and you have to the fee to use them. This makes the platform costly. But it is increasingly becoming popular with the corporate it is gaining more reliability and is now considered very stable also. It is a commercial product and supports .Net, ASP and SQL databases which can run only on this platform. But these applications are very user friendly and the programs can be developed in less time by using these applications. Looking to the various advantages of the applications that the applications associated with the Winos provide to the host more and more people are migrating from Linux to Windows. Of course there are some who still want to migrate to Linux from Windows but they should understand that migrating from Windows to Linux is not easy.

Migrating from Linux hosting to Windows hosting is easy
However migrating from Linux to windows hosting is not very difficult. The slight difference between the two is that in Linux the file names and the directory names are case sensitive while in Windows they are not case sensitive. Moreover, the Linux tools are open source and can support multiple platforms. So, most of the dynamic content can also be moved from the Linux platform to the Windows platform without great difficulty.

The Plesk backup can be used to migrate from the Linux to Windows. The best way to start work is to begin creating the domains one by one in the control panel and then copy the files in the http docs folder on the new server from the old one. You may have to make the changes in the coding depending on the language used in your website. You have also to change the permissions for your files and directories.

How Can Good Web Hosting Contribute Towards your Marketing strategy

Web Hosting

Choosing the right website hosting company to build your business online can pretty much determine its future. On more occasions than one, picking good web hosting can contribute in a big way towards your marketing strategy. There a number of hosting services in India that offer top-notch services in terms of helping you build your website seamlessly.

Understanding website hosting:
Before you even choose windows hosting services, you must have a fair idea of what hosting means. You must know beforehand that it is your host provider that will support your website's connectivity and storage needs. It is a crowd as far as hosting services are concerned, and it's only obvious that you make a good choice

Marketing Strategy through web hosts:
* Whether you choose windows hosting services or any other platform, a good marketing strategy for your website can fall in place only if you use marketing knowledge along with concrete information on the internet well. The main aim of your web strategy should be to meet the requirements of the desired target audience. In this respect it is the way search engines contribute to your website that can meet the achievement of your goals

* Low operation cost is another feature to look out for when determining your marketing strategy with support through your host. The con could however be identifying the customer base for your product. Also, you must always remember that investing in technical support will go a long way in determining the future of your website.

* On a broad level, you can categories the web strategy you adopt and the host you choose as consumer to consumer, business to business and consumer to business. An efficient host provider will enable you to employ a good chain in this respect.

* Understanding that your host should have a good know-how of the market is another key feature. You gain an upper hand if your provider takes care of this only because you have access to wider market research and how e-commerce businesses function. Your host will also take charge of giving you the lead on how your competitors are faring

* Providing solutions along with promotions of your website should also be among the priorities of your host. A web strategy must be complete in the sense of offering production, advertisement and quality to your website. The web host you choose should have offered specific guidelines and mandates that can help you not just develop your marketing strategy but also promote it correctly. This allows you to collate substantial information necessary for your business while also boosting your business online.

SEO, is an often ignored feature, particularly by persons who just about start transporting their business online. It is however another important aspect that can make or break your internet marketing strategy. To meet your desired goal through your marketing strategy, you must make good use of SEO services through your host. It is commonly known that best websites are those that are SEO – friendly. Customer feedback in this area is hence very important. Your host must be really good at providing customer support to help you play along an effective strategy on the web.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/web-hosting-articles/how-can-good-web-hosting-contribute-towards-your-marketing-strategy-6304076.html

Web Hosting- Choose your hosting company carefully before it is too late

Web Hosting

The market is crowded with web hosting services and sometimes making the appropriate choice can be quite tricky. It is hence essential that you pick your hosting company carefully, early on, rather than regret later. The main reason for this is that changing a host is definitely not one of the easiest things around and best avoided. What’s more, a reliable hosting company will only work in favor of your business.

Having to choose web hosting in India is no different than having to make a choice anywhere across the globe. When you pick a website hosting company, you can keep a check for the following points so that you don’t regret your choice:

• Obviously, the pre-requisite of a website, especially one for your business, is that it should be online for most parts. You must hence ensure that the web hosting services you pick are running on most occasions. While it’s okay to have a website down for a couple of hours once in a blue moon, if it happens more often, you definitely need to rethink your choice of web host provider. Downtime often leads consumers to jump to competitors, causing much loss to your business. 

• Expensive web hosting in India doesn't necessarily translate to better features. Check for reviews of the company you choose while also ensuring that all costing details are clearly communicated right from the word go. When you start off, it’s best to incur minimum costs. Typically, a good host will offer bandwidth, online storage and customer service for one flat price. 

• The security offered by your website hosting company should be clear. You must double check the policy your host offers. The company in question must not only be able to keep hackers at bay, but should also have all the necessary protection to keep customer information confidential. 

• The amount of bandwidth your hosting company offers you is another important aspect that should determine your choice of the provider. With less bandwidth at hand, you could be putting an unexpected cap on the traffic to your website, which in turn could damage your business. In addition limited bandwidth automatically means a slow website, which can put customers off. Imagine having to wait until eternity for a website to load! Keeping a track of your online visitors will help in this department.

• Another important pointer to keep in mind when you choose your web host provider is the email services offered. Make sure that you get enough resources to handle emails, since most communications in online businesses happen via email. 

• Yes, 24*7 customer service at your beck and call by your web host is as important as any of the things mentioned in this list. When you’re running a business online, you don’t want to be left in the lurch in times of crisis.

• Lastly, having the support of a host that gives you a free hand to add domains later will only be of much help. With this feature, you not only save on the money you spend, but can also organize your website constructively. 

The success of your online business can more often than not depend on your choice of web hosting provider. So, make the right pick, and give your business a much needed online boost. 

10 Tips to Follow When Switching a Web Host

Web Hosting Tips

You are unhappy with your provider and have made up your mind to switch your web host. This is definitely not one of the easiest jobs around. Nevertheless, if you remember a few things, you can almost certainly avoid pitfalls. Here are 10 tips that should ease the transition process:

Back-up: Transfer of a hosting service will have you looking at many things simultaneously. Hence taking a back-up of your web files and pages before you get started can help you in the long run. You don’t want to be worrying about lost files and misplaced pages, when there are other important things that demand attention.

Operating System: It is very important that you check the hosting plan of both your current and new provider. Often, if not paid attention to, this can lead to a broken website. Check and compare the similarities and differences in functionality as far as operating system of the hosts is concerned.
Storage: Assess the storage of your existing website much in advance. This will allow you to choose the correct web host to make the desired switch. Your new plan should have the ability to store not just your current website storage needs, but a little bit more too. The storage plan should typically be your total storage, log files and emails included.

Bandwidth: When you buy hosting, it is inevitable that you check for the amount of bandwidth offered. It should be at least on par with your existing provider. Not knowing about your bandwidth details can see you spend extra money with a new web host.

Shopping Cart: If yours is purely a business website, your new provider must be capable of either accommodating your shopping cart from your previous host or offer a new one that suits your requirements. This feature is essential if your site requires visitors to add their purchases to a shopping cart before proceeding further.

Mail Support: Another often ignored feature is that of email accounts. You must know in advance whether your new hosting provider will offer email accounts in the same quantity as your current provider. You may also want to check for mail forwards and auto responses.

Uploading Content: Hosting a website on a new provider can make you quite hassled, if you didn’t already check for the ease at which you can upload content. The functions and features of different hosts are obviously going to be different. It is important for you to check the know-how of your new provider as far as file uploads to the server is concerned. Most hosts offer to help you transfer your files.

FrontPage support: If your existing website deploys FrontPage, it is only essential that you check whether your new provider does so too. In addition to this, make sure that you check the version of FrontPage supported by both hosts is the same as well.

Email Set-up: Before you transfer your website to a new host, you must have your current email accounts set up on the new server. This ensures that there are no hassles and confusions later.

Script support: Lastly, your new provider must lend a helping hand to all your existing scripts on your website. Hosting a website on a new provider may require you to make relevant changes to your current scripts for smooth functioning.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Hosting Your Own Website

Shared Hosting

At the time of hosting the website you will first need to make a decision as to whether you would like to do the hosting yourself or get in touch with a hosting company that is well established to outsource it.

In both these options there are some disadvantages and advantages. Hosting a site on your own has its own advantages the first being having good control over the hosting, monitor each and every thing related to hosting and the site.

Cost Effective Option 
It is good hosting solutions if changes are to be made on a regular basis. You will need to have your own server, otherwise hosting the site on your own is a cost effective option. There is no need to make a payment to anyone at all for hosting the site.

Flexibility is offered to an unlimited extent, you can select your own tools, database and hardware, no need of understanding procedures of another company providing website hosting etc. or pay extra for use of bandwidth or space for disc storage.

Earn Income In Addition
Since you have the expertise and the equipment for hosting sites then you could do the job on behalf of others and in the process earn income in addition too. Hosting sites on your own can have some disadvantages too. The alternative is cheaper but you may need to hire staff, and expertise related to hosting can be a costly affair.

Equipment and server are also needed and to operate this, expertise and technical knowhow is required as well. Instead of concentrating on your business you would pay more attention to these issues. Fast and reliable connection is available but at an expensive rate. To outsource hosting is an advantageous idea. The experts handle the entire task when the web hosting task is outsourced.

Peace of Mind 
The companies offer 24x7 customer support thus giving you peace of mind. This is an important need for some of the sites. As per choice servers can be shared too if you find that it is adequate to have shared hosting. The disadvantage of considering an outsourcing company is taken away if collocation is the option considered.

The server can be maintained with collocation. As compared to hosting, a collocation center is much cheaper since a number of variables and bandwidth is shared with customers. Managed hosting can be purchased with outsourcing which can help take away all your worries.

Potential Security Risk 
Outsourcing has some disadvantages. Due to the hosting package limitation, things are dictated to a certain extent. You could land in trouble if the outsourcing company runs out of business. If for your company the major issue is security then there can be potential risk in outsourcing.

While outsourcing is a good option for a good number of businesses, for others it is not.  For those not having the experience of hosting their own website, the best way to go is considering services of an established company or web hosting services. Most important is to consider you needs first before settling on outsourcing services.