Posts Tagged ‘Managed Web Hosting’

Email Hosting.

March 24th, 2011

Every business knows the importance of email as the fastest and cost effective way of communication. Since most small businesses cannot afford expensive means of communications like overseas phone calls, fax etc, communicating through emails is definitely a bonus.  Email marketing is obviously very popular, and you have no doubt been sent a large number of emails since opening your first email address online. Although there are many genuine email marketing campaigns that are sent out on a daily basis from online retailers such as Amazon, there are unfortunately a lot of bogus ones containing potential phishing attacks and harmful data.

1)   Protection from virus, spam and phishing: Nothing spoils the functionality of your mailbox as a virus or a spam does. In addition, phishing endangers your business mails by stealing your identity, thereby causing huge loss. Setup an anti-virus – Although this may sound like a very simplistic one that you are likely to see on any security checklist, an anti-virus is incredibly important, especially if you are using a desktop email client such as Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird (online email providers such as Gmail and Hotmail tend to have built-in virus protection software).

2)   Improved business position: Look out for a email hosting provider who holds vast expertise in picking and implementing the right messaging systems aligning with your business. Also, ensure the features like high availability and high scalability of email solutions offered. They must be customized to cater to your specific email needs.

3)   Best in class communications: Check that your email hosting provider has cutting-edge infrastructure to be able to lessen all your email hosting worries.

4)   Reliable, Customizable Offerings: Find out if your email hosting services include exclusive features like email back-up, data recovery, disaster recovery, 24×7 technical and customer support to ensure that you make the most out of your emails.

5)   Cost efficiency: The key reason for outsourcing the email hosting services to an external vendor is to reduce the unexpected expenditures and get the maximum output without increasing costs. A good email hosting provider will not only meet these needs, but also suggest you the ways to increase the efficiency of your messaging applications in every required way.

6)   Improved availability: Check out if your email hosting provider employs professionals to host and manage your messaging applications, ensuring high-availability of your applications as well as optimal performance.

7)   Be careful when clicking: Once you’ve received an email it can be tempting to click straight through to a website if you see an interesting deal or image – but that’s exactly what you have to be careful of doing. Hover over or copy the link to your clipboard if possible, allowing you the opportunity to examine the destination URL before you proceed.

8) Avoid entering details:   Some potentially harmful emails will encourage you to enter your personal details (credit card/address) directly into a form embedded into an email – and this should be avoided at all costs. Forms that are embedded into emails are done so for a reason, and that is because the destination in which the information is sent is often hidden.

9) If it’s true good to be true, it usually is: If you receive any emails containing promises of fantastic deals that you believe seem too good to be true, then be very wary. Use your favourite search engine to run a quick search to see if anybody else has mentioned the promotion anywhere, and the chances are you will be given an answer one way or another.

10) Be wary of forgotten password emails: Unless you know you have specifically requested your password to be reset on a website, you should delete any emails you receive that claim to be resetting your ‘forgotten password’. These types of emails are often looking for you to enter personal details in unsecure locations.

11)  Ignore unsolicited emails: If you receive an email out of the blue from somebody you have absolutely no connection with, be immediately wary. There is the chance your email address could have been picked up online by a potentially harmful sender, meaning you may receive unsolicited emails relating to various topics. Do not reply, and do not open any containing attachments.

12)  Avoid providing any private details: A final but yet hugely important tip is to avoid providing any personal details via email at all costs. Don’t send credit card or PayPal login details to anybody via email no matter what the circumstance, and if you have to provide somebody with a password or piece of secure information, provide this in person or over the phone where possible.

With the above tips in mind, you should be relatively free of would-be phishing attacks via email marketing campaigns online. One thing to remember is always is wary – always. There are unfortunately a lot of people who make their money online by scamming others, so it’s important to stay on your toes and report and doubtful activity.

Be a reseller web hosting provider.

March 2nd, 2011

Just as people have to have a place to call home, websites also must have a “residence.” As individuals seek housing, internet entrepreneurs seek hosting for their websites. These days there is an enormous demand for web hosting services and becoming a web hosting reseller to try to help meet that demand can be an easy business to operate from home.

Opening a web hosting reseller business is one of the wisest ways to put up or expand your internet based business. However, do not take this step just by deciding overnight and getting into the web hosting reseller market, the very next morning. Whenever you start a new web hosting reseller business you must be aware of the inside and the outside of it. The various points that you should work on, before you start a web hosting reseller business is as follows:

Market research and planning: The first important point to be considered in a business is that you must do a proper market research. Planning is also one of the primary factors for the success towards your new web hosting reseller business. There is little scope for people who start their business without setting specific goals and objectives.

Marketing research: Don’t fall in the race. Just try to be a good service provider. Research how other companies provide good services to their customers. Take from advice that is in that business; because experience is always a good teacher.  If you want to get ahead in your web hosting reseller business, you must get to know which companies are more successful and which are the ones who have achieved least success in their business. This information will act as a feedback and it will guide you to decide what to do and what to avoid with regard to your own web hosting reseller business.

Have a market plan: You can develop a successful business plan for your new web hosting reseller business by collecting the required information from your initial research. Also, you need to be aware of the fact that just by having a sound business plan does not mean that you will definitely achieve success in your web hosting reseller business. Writing a business plan will only act as a guide and it will help you tackle the challenges and obstacles that come on your way towards starting your web hosting reseller business.

After starting service:

Give your customers better service. As a reseller provider, your number one priority should be customer service. This is where you can shine above the larger companies, since they likely have many customer service representatives who are likely not monitored regularly. Even more, they may even hire overseas representatives to keep their overhead low. By providing excellent customer services, you have the best chance at building a strong customer base. The number one rule a reseller should live by is MAKE SURE YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE HAPPY.

Know how to grow. As a reseller, you will be responsible for growing your own customer base. For this reason, it is important to know where to market and who to market to. Small business owners are a good start. You can advertise that you, the owner, will work directly with them whenever they have any questions, concerns, or need technical help. This is give them the comfort of knowing that they will not have to deal with a customer service representative if something happens with their account.

Customize your hosting plans. If you are able to split your ‘plans’ up how you want them, advertise that you can make a customized plan specific to the customer’s individuals needs. You can also let them know that, as their business or website grows, their plan can grow with them. You may also want to split up some very tiny plans and sell them for $1-2 a month. These would have just enough space for a 5-10 page basic personal website and include no extras. To someone who needs a very small amount of space, such as a parent whose child wants a website, $1 a month will look much better that $5-$10. If you are able to gain enough customers via this method, it may be much more profitable that selling larger plans.

Offer discounts for current customers who refer new customers. To make sure you come out ahead, you can always specify that the new customers must remain a customer for so many months before the discount is given to the current customer. A good idea is to offer 1-3 months worth of free service in exchange for a customer that buys a 6-12 month plan. Remember ‘honesty is the best policy’, please doesn’t full your customer by offering something unmanageable that you can’t manage. It will hurt your customers & they won’t trust you after that.

Choose a reliable service. As a web hosting reseller, you have a responsibility to your customers if you want to keep them around. This responsibility includes making sure that you are reselling services from a reliable company. If you choose a bad company that has significant downtime and does not have enough resources to support all of the customers that they have taken on, you are liable to lose most of the customers that you bring in.

Do your homework. Lastly, if want to run a reselling business, it is always a good idea to know something about servers, scripting languages, and other issues that may arise with your customers. This will allow you to respond to their questions and concerns quicker than if you have to look up the answers yourself.

Reselling is a great business to start and offers a lot of profit opportunity if you know how to market your business correctly. You have the potential to grow a booming business quickly with very little overhead and everything is done online. No building maintenance, employees (unless you choose).

CMS Hosting.

February 10th, 2011

There are many ways to self-manage your dedicated server, and using a content management system is one of them. While a content management system (CMS) will not take care of the server-side development aspects of your dedicated server, using a CMS for web hosting management can assist you in keeping track of your website content and can simplify the editing and implementing process.

So what is a content management system and why is CMS web hosting important?

A content management system is very simply exactly what it states – a system that assists webmasters in maintaining and editing their content on a day-to-day basis. In the web hosting realm, using a CMS to manage your dedicated server is what many webmasters do to minimize effort and outsourcing technical support. Content management systems are designed to be as user-friendly and effortless as possible, as they are designed with the new and inexperienced webmaster in mind. So you can be sure that when you are using a content management system with dedicated web hosting that you will be able to fully maintain your website and implement new changes, add text and photos, blog and links with ease.

Some of the most popular content management systems for web hosting are Joomla, Mambo, WordPress, b2evolution, DotNetNuke, Drupal, Moveable Type, and Typo. Joomla web hosting has become extremely popular recently due to the many free Joomla extensions available, and WordPress Web Hosting is arguably the easiest CMS web hosting platform available for novice webmasters.

For more visit: www.version-next.com

Dedicated Web Hosting.

January 31st, 2011

It is extremely important to recognize the concept of web hosting, even if you don’t know anything about it. When you visit a website, you will see a web page that is downloaded from a web server on your own web browser. Generally the website is composed of many web pages and web sites in turn are composed of graphic images and text. These web pages are stored on web servers so that they can be available to web users. It is good to have an understanding web hosting basics that will allow you to make the right decision when you purchase hosting plan. Often times, You May find everything from a dedicated web hosting provider, and the situation may require you to go to the custom server.

If someone wants to have its own website, it is the first time will have to have a host of services that will host Web sites on the web server. Web hosting provider that was well established, it can host many web sites, to thousands of items, for example, Version Next Technologies is a Web hosting company that is very popular and seats up hundreds of thousand pages. While the host of a large number of web sites, web hosting providers require a huge number of web servers to store Web pages. After that, all those web servers are connected to the Internet and are kept in a ‘data center’. Since web servers must work properly all the time, data centers are fully confident that it gives them 24 / 7 environment and protected from fire, virus detection, redundant power backup, HV AC temperature control, computer data backup, and full of opportunities for recovery in case of some fail.

Your website will need about 10 MB (for a small web site) to 250 MB (for large sites) on the server hard disk. Web-based records will enable you to manage your domain name, e-mail and FTP services, password protect directories, and much more.

There are some disadvantages to a dedicated hosting arrangement. You have to pay high monthly fees in exchange for their freedom and an exclusive web hosting. You will also have good technical know-how to run the server properly and resolve any technical problems that occur. It could be time-consuming, but if you hire someone to do it for you, you’ll have to pay for their services. This would mean that you now have the maintenance costs on the amount you have already, that will not be the case in a shared web hosting.

If a dedicated hosting plan is something you don’t like and want to go for a custom dedicated server, then keep in mind the following:

Data storage – this means the area of your website will need the server’s hard drive.It May ranges from a small town with 10 megabytes of storage for large business sites that require 250 MB or more.

Data transfer or bandwidth, which refers to the amount of data transmitted over electronic networks as a response to the demands of visitors. It depends on the size of your website and the flow of traffic to your site.

You would need a web based control panel too with the help of which you can manage your domain name, e-mail, FTP services, as well as password protection and much more.

When you decide to custom dedicated servers, You May want to include a private CGI-bin, which will allow you to run your own PERL scripts and executable s. With a custom dedicated server, it is also possible to get SSI (Server Side Includes) that you insert a file in your HTML pages on the server side.

For more visit: www.version-next.com

.htaccess Tips and Tricks

January 25th, 2011

.htaccess (hypertext access) is the default name of a directory-level configuration file that allows for decentralized management of web server configuration.

There are tons of things you can do from the htaccess file inside of your web hosting account.  From redirecting the users to controlling who can get in and who can get out, it is a very useful file to have on your hosting account.  To help out the new web hosting clients and to act as a reminder to the old pros around here, I thought I would go through five of the most popular .htaccess tips I know.

Redirect to a Maintenance Page

This is a great one to use if you need to make some quick web page edits, and you don’t want the public to see you edit your web site, while it is still live.

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/offline.html$

RewriteRule .* /offline.html [R=307,L]

This will redirect anybody who checks out any web page on your web site to the “offline.html” file.

Force the Use of “www” in Front of a Domain Name

If you want to keep the www in front of your domain name, no matter how somebody types it in, here is the ‘bit of .htaccess magic you will need:

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

rewritecond %{http_host} ^mydomain.com [nc]

rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Once you have done so, both mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com will both send you to www.mydomain.com

Remove the “www” From in Front of a Domain Name

You can also force your domain to drop the www from the address when typed in, if you would rather have it the other way around. In that situation, you would need to add this to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mydomain.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This will make both mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com send you to just mydomain.com.

Manually Create Custom Error Pages

Ever check out some of those customized error pages and wonder how it could be done? Just use these snippets of .htaccess code to tell people where to look for your error pages.

ErrorDocument 400 /errors/400.html

ErrorDocument 401 /errors/401.html

ErrorDocument 403 /errors/403.html

ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.html

ErrorDocument 500 /errors/500.html

This tells the server to look inside the “errors” folder and that specific page for each of the different error types. That is not all of the error codes, but they are the ones that will be ‘hit by your users 99 percent of the time.

Block Visitor By IP Address

Need to keep somebody from checking out your web site?  This next tip will give you the ability to deny somebody based on what their IP address is:

order allow,deny

deny from 123.45.6.7

deny from 012.34.5.

allow from all

The above blocks access to the site from 123.45.6.7, and from any sub-domain under the IP block 012.34.5. (012.34.5.1, 012.34.5.2, 012.34.5.3, etc).

Before you go off and plant htaccess everywhere, read through this and make sure you don’t do anything redundant, since it is possible to cause an infinite loop of redirects or errors if you place something weird in the htaccess.

Also…some sites do not allow use of htaccess files, since depending on what they are doing, they can slow down a server overloaded with domains if they are all using htaccess files. I can’t stress this enough: You need to make sure you are allowed to use htaccess before you actually use it. Some things that htaccess can do can compromise a server configuration that has been specifically setup by the admin, so don’t get in trouble.

Reseller Hosting Can be a New line of business Choice for Web Designers

January 18th, 2011

When we talk about the web hosting industry, we generally can think of two classes- the provider and the client side. One offer the service, while the other utilizes it to run his or her business online. But actually, there is a third side to it too or one can say a service model that lies between these two sides i.e. reseller hosting. This is a competent yet easy-to handle business model that can anytime be blended with any other business model, enabling owner to earn doubled profits.

The option of Reseller hosting services has been opening opportunities for a number of small business owners who are aiming at taking their current revenue stream higher by rendering custom hosting packages to their client base. However, amongst all business models, the one that seems most apt to be united and rendered with reseller hosting package is of web development services. This is why web developers having a consistently growing client base must consider adding web hosting service model to their line of business.

Including the Cost of Services

an ideal way to begin with this is starting to sell all-inclusive packages. Such packages take care of complete site development and management on the basis of a set monthly fee. Typically, this monthly fee includes expenses of hosting, site maintenance and custom design tweaks that are made as per clients’ suggestions. By combining the two services together, you can actually quote a higher price and aim to make a bigger profit. With the added advantage of being a web designer, you may easily convince your client with a convenient package comprising site design, organization and hosting.

Internet Businessmen

pitching for already established online websites or big giants is not very suitable for you since these will already have big hosting plans. Hitting the right set of crowd is very important for business growth at any stage. Hence, rather than opting for experienced online businessmen, it is better to go after offline crowd, since their information and experience in this field would be much limited. Offline business owners who are not technically inclined are more likely to buy reseller plans, and let me tell you this does not limit your targeted crowd.

One thing that is always consistent with every business owner is the aspiration of growing bigger. Be it a medical shop or a giant corporate house, every business wishes to expand more and more, so that they reach to the biggest of podium of clients and customers. Fortunately, World Wide Web successfully fulfills this aspiration of reaching out the masses, economically. Hence for a reseller hosting service provider, the clientele is humongous. Moreover, since you are a web developer who is ready to take up the projects of web hosting services, the combination of offering website development and hosting may pitch your sales much higher.

For more visit:www.version-next.com

Free Web Hosting Might Be a Bad Idea.

January 13th, 2011

Internet is growing very fast. In developing countries, many people have now started using internet. If you want go global with your business or with your hobby, you need web site. To make web site, you will need web space. This web space is provided by hosting service providers. Some hosting provider gives hosting service free of charge. This article has full information about free hosting account.

A webhost essentially provides you with the space and the domain for your web content and as you can tell with a quick search using the Google search engine, there are many free services out there.
Free hosting services, there are many issues attached. The first issue is with the domain name they give. Free hosting providers don’t allow you to choose your own domain names. You will have to select sub domain of the domain name they provide. So your domain name will become lengthier. It’s really hard to remember long domain names.

Free hosting providers put advertising on the hosted web site. This way they generate money to support their hardware and expenses of hosting service. If visitors see the ads which are not related to web site content, then they don’t trust on your writing. When visitors become unhappy, you lose your business.

There is a problem of bandwidth limitation also. Free hosting providers have put restriction on some ways. If free hosting providers don’t put restriction then their maintenance cost will be very high. So they give limited bandwidth. When you reach your bandwidth quota, your account is suspended. So nobody will be able to access your web site.

There are also many technical limitations in free web hosting account. You won’t get any database access. You are simply given ftp access. You are also not provided more secure access like SSH. Today many web sites have become dynamic and use PHP. These PHP support is not provided by free service provider.

The biggest problem we can think of is a suspension of an account. Imagine a situation where you have made your web site, you have given time to promote it and when your web site become famous, your account is disabled for some stupid reason. What will you do? All your attempts to promote your web site is now waste. You can’t do anything.

In my opinion, the only advantage of free web hosting is that it’s free. There is no other advantage but there are many disadvantages. I wouldn’t recommend free web hosting.

After all there is nothing for free in this selfish world.

Visit: www.version-next.com

Web Hosting Services to Publish a Blog or Website.

December 13th, 2010

In order to publish a blog or website online and make it accessible to computers connected to the Internet you need a Web host. A Web Host is also sometimes referred to as a Web Server and it is just like another computer somewhere else in the online world that provides a convenient and safe space to store your blog and website pages and files so that people can access to them 24/7/365 via the World Wide Web.

You can also link your domain name to your web host so as to allow online users to access your website pages and files via your domain name. When you first link your domain name to your web host it is assigned with a unique IP that points to your data stored on the server. And whenever people who wanted to access your web-pages and files from any place on the internet enters your domain name into their browser’s address bar, what happens is the IP-address associated with it is located and website is loaded from your web host.

Instead of using a web server as a central place on the internet to get access to your website pages and files you can also host yourself using your own personal server at the comfort of your home but it is not a preferred choice for many because of the fact that it is very complicated to setup, maintain and also to ensure that your server is running 24×7. So, it is much more affordable, reliable, simpler and hassle free to use a web hosting service instead of doing it yourself.

There are different types of hosting depending on the services provided by the web hosting companies.

Here are some of the most common ones: Free Web Hosting,Shared Web Hosting,Reseller Web Hosting,Dedicated Hosting,Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) Hosting,Colocation Web Hosting,Cloud Hosting,Clustered Hosting,Grid Hosting etc.

Dedicated Server and Dedicated Hosting?

November 11th, 2010

Due to the previously high cost of dedicated hosting, public knowledge of what exactly a dedicated hosting service entailed was no really available. This is rapidly changing, as companies flock to fast dedicated servers as an essential element of their business model, but there are still a good number of people looking for clear and easy answers when it comes to small business web hosting. We’ll try to provide you a information on dedicated servers and small business web hosting services.

What exactly is dedicated web server hosting?

Dedicated server hosting for small businesses is very popular. If you have the staff that is available to maintain your fast dedicated small business hosting server, we step out of the way, meaning that you will have the power to fully administer your fast dedicated server, with no outside appearance, from anywhere in the world.  We provide the space for your server, and a multi-homed, redundant backbone large enough to serve even the largest, most media intensive sites. We provide server security. Security from power outages, security from network downtime, and security from physical intrusion, while allowing you to run your dedicated server the way you want to, with no outside interference.

With these options, we’re always onsite and ready to react, whether you need a hardware upgrade, or a little bit of help exploring an issue your techs are curious about. Our team has one goal, to make sure you are beyond satisfied with your experience. A dedicated server is easy to start and maintain, and you will not be the least bit disappointed in the first class service provides.

web Hosting Overseas – Is it Worth it?

October 30th, 2010

If you have your web hosting overseas, the question arises, does this affect your search engine rankings, and how? There are many reasons why you might want or need to host your sites in a country other than the one where you reside or do the majority of your business. Let’s look at some of these and the possible outcomes for your sites.

Location, Location: Much like real estate, location matters. The closer your server is to your clients, the faster those clients will be able to access your website. Even in a virtual existence, the physical distance between servers and end users can make a difference. Most internet marketers target United States and European citizens, so by hosting halfway around the globe, website response time for target demographics may be adversely affected.

Businesses will often choose to have a country specific domain (.uk .ca etc.) if they have a subsidiary outlet in that country doing business, particularly if it has a physical address. The benefits are very good for any local search that finds your company within the search for any particular geographical area.

Companies opting for an international reach without using any approach other than a virtual one, still may find it useful to employ a country specific domain, and the associated web hosting, to try and capture some of the market share to be found there.

Other savvy webmasters, in their attempts to try and set up a network of sites with varying IP addresses, will use web hosting overseas to accomplish their ends. Usually these network sites are of little value, except for their short term use in gaming the search engines in search of higher rankings.

The effects of hosting your sites in a country other than the one in which you do business are difficult to quantify, but there is some anecdotal evidence that suggests that sites with a country specific domain, say a .uk domain extension for example, will be favored more than a .com, .net or other extension in that particular market. Geo-location plays a part in how the search engines (particularly Google) view who a site is intended to serve.

The consensus seems to be that if you are aiming to target a specific audience, you should use a country specific domain extension, use web hosting in that area, and focus on building links that come mainly from sites in that geo-location. This and a few tweaks to your meta data and it will be abundantly clear to any robot that happens by who you’re targeting.

The search engines can read not only the domain extension, but incoming links, IP addresses, physical addresses in your content and more for use in determining where you intend your market to be. If you want to rank for terms in a specific region or country, doing your best to line up all the factors that affect how your pages are viewed only makes sense.

This can make a great difference in your rankings for certain countries. While a .com might have a hard time ranking for your terms in a global or US market, that same site may do a great deal better in a more limited market, especially by virtue of a highly targeted site, domain extension, IP address and more that it would have working for it. Definitely worth thinking about, if you are chasing global business.

As you can see, there is some thought that needs to go into your decision about where and how to host your sites if you are thinking of using overseas web hosting. Hopefully these thoughts will help get you on the right track!

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