a newbies guide to web hosting shopping

7/29/2019 A Newbies Guide to Web Hosting Shopping

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A Newbie`s Guide To Web Hosting Shopping by Mahabalix Software Solutions Ltd

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A

Newbie`s

Guide

ToWeb Hosting

Shopping

Mahabalix Software Solutions Ltd

All Rights Reserved.


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This Ebook is intended for free distribution of potential webmasters! The entire material

is endorsed and protected by Mahabalix software solutions limited.

Disclaimer: This material is to be used as a guide only. There are NO references to anythird parties or companies whatsoever. Any such inferences do not all under the

responsiblity of Mahabalix Software Solutions Ltd.

Contents

Foreword 3

Introduction 4

Getting started 5

Getting your hands dirty 7

Domain name 7

Hosting/Disk Space 9

Bandwidth 13

Subdomains, Add-on domains and parked domains 14

MySQL databases, PostgreSQL 15

Email Features 16

Add-Ons 17

Dedicated IP & SSL 17

Script Installations 18

More advice 19

Conclusion 20


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ForewordThis small guide is dedicated to making potential webmasters who are looking to buy or

even renew their web hosting accounts. This material is for beginners and laymen, so

chances are that, should you be an experienced web hosting account holder or webdesigner, there isn`t much useful material for you here.

I would advise you to skim through the pages once before you actually start reading it.

Also, keep in mind that this booklet is a compilation of expert opinions and advice. You

may or may not take everything seriously. There is a good chance once you become a

webmaster you will form your own judgments with your experience! But till then this

guide might come in handy!


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Introduction

If you are reading this book, I take it that most probably a layman looking for a web

hosting solution. You might be a college student, or a business CEO..it really does not

matter.

When you go out shopping for web hosting, chances are you will be baffled and amazed

our vast this ocean of web hosting is. A simple Google Search will yield you a million

web hosting providers and each of them might be good in their own ways. It might be

quite overwhelming for a person to embark on this endless adventure of buying hosting.

I have seen people spending months doing this.

This booklet intends to help you expose to the variety of web hosting solutions that

exist. It does not make any reference to any professional web hosting companies, but

will allow you to judge to some extent, the web hosting solution that you will require for

your blog or your enterprise website.

Once again, this booklet does not have anything related to web designing. It has

minimal technical references to even web hosting!


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Getting started

I assume you have the following to start:-

An internet connection A credit card or a PayPal account or globally acceptable method of payment.

*Note that it might be illegal for you to be buying hosting if you are not an adult(below

18). Please check with the Terms and Conditions of your provider

Allocating a budget for spending

Hosting solutions exist from completely free to thousands of dollars per year and given

huge market, it is quite easy to get duped into buying low quality hosting for a high price

or even vice-versa.

Typically, you need to have a minimum of $50 to get started. You might avail hosting for

free with only a domain name cost of $10 dollars, but further add-ons in the future may

easily cause you to spend your money like water. To facilitate things, I have allocated

the following minimum spending budgets per year for you.

Minimum spending budgets/per year - hosting only

Student/Individual - small website for blogs $70

Heavy hobby sites - $150

Portals -$220

Small business -$300

Big enterprise -$600


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Note that these prices have been deduced following the trends of quality web hosting

providers. It may happen that actual prices differ drastically (Mahabalix Hosting

Services are much cheaper). These spending budgets have not been biased towards

any company.

Some basics about web hosting

To build a website you are need of two things:

A domain nameA domain name is something like "www.google.com". It is an address thatidentifies your website and is the only means through which your website can be

accessed through the internet.

A hosting spaceA hosting space is just disk space that sits on a high end computer known as a

server somewhere. It is in that space that all the files you build in php, jsp, html...

reside.

The computer is known as a serverbecause it actually serves the pages (technically the

server is the name given to the piece of software running on that computer but even the

computer is referred to as such)

With these we will delve into the depth of web hosting features that will determine the

best hosting for you.


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Getting Your Hands Dirty

Domain name

In most companies and hosting deals, you will find that web hosting is often sold in the

form of packages. Each package has its own features in limited extents.

Often a package may include a free domain. (Mahabalix does not include it as keeping

domains as separate entities allows you to have more control on your recurring

payments, transfers etc)

Even separate billing for domains is ok.

But here are some things you should be careful of when you are going to buy your

hosting:

Subdomains are for free and should be unlimited for standard packages

There might be exceptions to the rule i.e. For e.g. free deals may not allow subdomains.

Smaller deals may place a limit on subdomains, but typically subdomains should be

unlimited.

A subdomain is something like "john.google.com" The name just before the domain

name part determines the uniqueness of a subdomain. It can be basically anything

except www which is the default for the primary domain name pages.

The .com part in the complete domain name is known as the TLD or Top Level Domain.

.com and .org are the most popular ones. Each TLD has the function of indicating thenature of the site it is associated with. .com signifies commercial website while .org

refers to organization. This is the norm- however the .com TLD is nowadays used in a

less rigid context. There is also a popular myth going on that .com websites rank better.


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The domain names you buy are registered with your retailer, which may be in turn

registered with a reseller and reseller and so on-until finally the domain name reaches

the ICANN registration board where all domain names are registered.

Domain names typically vary between $10 to $200 dollar per year - the pricechanging with the type of the TLD.

You cannot use domain names registered by someone else. i.e. wikipedia.org has been

registered by Jimmy Wales so you cannot use it. However wikipedia.com can be

registered by you! But this is something very improbable because of two reasons:

1.When a website becomes famous, people often try to buy domain names that aresimilar to those which are viral. For e.g. when facebook.com became popular, people

started buying facbuk.com, facebook.co.in, fcaebook.com and so on. This was just a

way of making money through traffic - is a user-misspelt facebook, he would be directed

to another website.

2. Because of this malpractice domain name owners started buying all the related

names themselves and started putting redirects towards the main url.

If you are the owner of a major company or organisation you are advised to do it. But if

you are just a web enthousiast or want to build a personal website you might not want

spending extra bucks on extra domain names!


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Hosting/Disk Space:

This is often the most important criteria while choosing a deal. And to allow you to

make an efficient choice, here is how I tried to break it down.

Shared vs private/dedicated/server

Shared hosting means that your website files lie next to files of other websites in

different folders but in the same drive/server. In case of dedicated hosting the files lie

on only one server space/drive. (You might like to think of it as drive - if you are more

experienced: dedicated hosting may might mean that the website is running on another

copy of the server software and its folder)

Interpretations are many but you can be abstracted from these details. Most of the time

you need not worry about them as long as you have chosen a good deal with a reputed

host. The headache is for the provider.

Shared hosting, because of the way in which it is organized, is actually cheap - which is

a good thing. You get more space and features for your bucks and it`s all jolly and

merry.

Dedicated hosting is good only businesses and organizations. You may get paranoid at

the beginning and may even want to invest in servers if you can afford them - but if youare planning to host only a simple website, then it is not worth it.

Another key thing is a trend that we see in our consumer market. People often buy

hosting when they are still in the process formulating their idea of building a website.

The idea has not quite taken shape yet - no website files exist and that is commonly

when the hosting shopping is made. As a result the actual usage of the space may take

place on average after 4 months to 1 year. Sometimes the space is never used and goes

to waste.


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FFMpeg vs the others

FFMpeg is a server feature that allows you to run videos on your website. I myself

consider each a very trivial feature as it is something like the radio in a car.

Unfortunately you will find that may cars in the web hosting world, even limousines do

not have in built stereo.

My advice to you is to BUY FFMPEG hosting - you will be in need of hosting a video,somewhere sometime...even for your personal blog. You might want to upload the video

directly to your site without having YouTube as a mediator, so as to keep it more

personal.

PHP vs JSP,ASP & others

Servers come in varied flavors but 99 percent of them are Apache based and have PHP

as well. To be able run ASP and JSP etc you need to have extra modules so you might

want to search for a server that offers that(this might be more relevant if you are a

business).

However PHP is good to go.

**Curl,SQL rewrite etc

These are features that you might want to search with Google. These are more relevant

if you plan to use CMSes or web applications etc. However most servers today supportCurl so you need to worry about it.


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Here are some stuff you might want to watch out:

Joomla Hosting, Wordpress Hosting, CPanel Hosting etc...

DO NOT BUY INTO THIS CRAP

CPanel is just a server management control panel.(Mahabalix offers CPanel) However

by experience, I can assure you that all server management control panels end up

having the same features(though CPanel is common)

Any server that supports PHP, MYSQL and other features such as Curl(not a must) can

support by default any such CMS i.e. Joomla, WordPress and so on. Joomla and

Wordpress,etc are just a bunch of PHP and some config files.

The purpose of using Wordpress hosting, Joomla hosting is only to increase sales. So

do not buy into marketing gimmicks.

Unlimited Hosting!!

Remember the Shakespearian story - The Merchant of Venice, where the contract waswritten to give a pound of flesh - as a result of which a single drop of blood could not be

taken?

The situation is not very different here. A large number of hosting companies provide

hosting deals including unlimited space at a very cheap space. Here are a number of

reasons why you should look out for them:

Missing FFMPegIt happens often that a consumer buys unlimited hosting that cannot play videos andhas to switch to another provider. FFMPeg is a software or module that is installed on

servers to allow support for playing of videos. Most server providers, especially

unlimited hosting providers do not provide this feature as due to an increased load on

the server. Increased load equals increased costs and so on.


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Size and bandwidth "suffocation""Suffocation" is just a term I coined myself to allow you to understand the problem

better. Often these big unlimited hosting providers provide unlimited web hosting.

But hey, unlimited hard disk space does not exist! As this possibly defies a fundamental

rule of physics!

What happens is that the website resides on a very large disk space alongside other

websites which is perfectly ok.

Unlimited hosting space is provided with the confidence that despite the option, the

consumer may never use large amounts of hosting space. As a matter of fact, even

large websites for e.g. a University website may only be around 600 Mb which can be

easily stored. Suppose if you built a website that spread as virally as when facebook

was first conceived, the bandwidth chokes up and the website shows erratic behavioursuch as crashing of databases, the server itself- or slows loads etc- Which means that

you have to change your provider or buy your own physical servers for hosting.

So do take care when you are going for unlimited space. It is probably prudent to buy a

hosting space with a higher price but which provides quality hosting than buying

unlimited for cheap.

After all what would you do with a ton of salmon if you are a vegetarian right?


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Bandwidth

The bandwidth of your account simple refers to the amount of data transfer that can

take place in a particular second between you server and every other computer

connected to it. For e.g. if your account had a bandwidth of say 700mb/s, someoneconnected to the server could download a movie of size 700mb in a second. If it was

1400mb/s, 2 people could download the movie simultaneously.

This is possible if the visitor has the same internet connection bandwidth of something if

higher speed.(My internet connection is faster implies it has higher bandwidth) If

suppose Jim were to download a movie of 700MB. Your bandwidth was 700MBps, but

his only 1 MB - it would be limited by his connection, so only 1MB/s will be used. This

means that other people can also simultaneously download from the server.

But here`s the thing- the bandwidth specified by your provider is the maximum

bandwidth will be available to your account. If your account had a 700mbps bandwidth

and suppose Jim made an arrangement such that 700 of his friends would try to

download the movie at the same time, together with Jim it will be 701 people, each with

1Mb/s connection. i.e. the requirement is 701Mbps but the your account has been

allocated only 700mbps.In this case several things might happen. The server might

refuse an extra connection. Or the account may simply be suspended until you

purchase more bandwidth or till the number of connections decrease.

Several hosting deals have "unlimited bandwidth" - this means that your account will

never go down, even with an infinitely large number of connections!

However speeds might start choking after a while - say you intended the website to be

used by a thousand people, but if it used by a million people-speed reduction is

inevitable.


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Subdomains,Add-on domains and parked domains

Sub domain

Lets say your domain is mysite.com.

You install a Message Board and put in in a directory called mysite.com/board/.

You can turn the directory board into a sub-domain by adding it as a sub-domain from

your Control Panel.

Now you can access your Message board as either mysite.com/board OR

board.mysite.com

This costs you nothing and is free.

Parked Domain

You have two domains mysite.com and my-other-site.com.mysite.com is the domain of your website and you want to add my-other-site.com.

You want them both to go to the same place. In other words, when someone types either

www.mysite.com or www.my-other-site.com they will go to the same page(s) on your

website.

In order to have additional parked domains you need to purchase them from a

registry/provider/reseller

Add-On Domains

You have two domains mysite.com and my-other-site.com.

You want the two domains to be totally separate/independent websites.

In order to have additional add-on domains you need to purchase them from a

registry/provider/reseller


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MySQL databases, PostgreSQL

A database is a form of storing data. Lets say you have a set of school student records

to manage such as their name etc, you put them in a database. A Google search should

be able to teach you more than you need.

In case of websites MySQL databases are typically used to store data from CMSes. If

you are using a CMS or script like Joomla you might need a CMS in 90 percent if the

cases.

PHP and MYSQL have always been used together.

My advice in case you are looking for a cheap hosting deal and there is a limit on 5, it

should be enough. Even full-fledged websites nowadays have less than 5 databases. If

you are prepared to spend however, go for a deal with unlimited databases.

*PostgreSQl is another form of MySQL but do not worry if your provider does not give

PostgreSQL - you might probably never use it.

FTP accounts

FTP refers to File transfer protocol is a way of uploading files to your account. You

might learn more when you actually build your website, but here are the basics for you

to do your shopping.

Normally you would use an FTP program known as an FTP client to do your uploading.

FileZilla is a good example of that. You need to use it to connect to your hosting space

on the server where you can upload your files. But you need some form of restriction to

prevent everyone on at random uploading stuff to your server. Therefore your hosting

provider requires you to create something known as an FTP account which is nothing

but a username and password to verify your identity.

For an average website even a small business site up to 5 accounts for FTP for enough

as you can share the username and passwords with your staff(unless you run a big

company and have lots of staff)


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So if you are just planning to open a personal website and you have come across a good

deal but are uncertain about the number of FTP accounts, you can take it.

Email Features

While at this stage you do not need much detail-POP3 email accounts refer to plain

simple email accounts that you can have.(POP3 is a name for Post Office Protocol which

is a fancy name for an encryption communicated service for emails)

For e.g. if you have a domain name called johndoe.com, you could create an emailaccount [email protected].

You might want to consider SMTP features in your web hosting account. By default all

providers provide SMTP(Simple mail transfer protocols) - which is a more secure way of

exchanging emails - this is particularly relevant if you want to connect for e.g. your

Gmail account or your Microsoft Outlook to your website email account so that you

receive all your mail at one place(yes you can do that!)

If you are opening a small blog, 3 email accounts suffice.(usually under free web

hosting deals)

Email accounts however can increase i significant numbers once you open up a

commercial or heavy traffic website.


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ADD-ONS

Dedicated IP and SSL

If you are planning to open an ecommerce website or a very large social network, this

section might be relevant to you. Otherwise you can skip this part.

SSL refers to Secure Socket Layer which is basically encrypting information sent over

the internet. So if you are particularly worried about your users private data- which is

the case in ecommerce where you may have to transmit your credit card numbers or

banking details, it is recommended to check if your hosting provider gives you such

facility.

To allow SSL to be installed, you need to have a dedicated IP for your account. An IP is

just a number that identifies your hosting account on the internet like 213.34.22.11. In

fact domain names are used as replacements for IP addresses which are so hard to

remember. If you typed an IP address for a domain name instead of the domain name

you would access the same website.

However the IP address for a hosting account might not be rigidly fixed. It may happen

that accounts on shared hosting are copied or transferred to some other drives or

machines, as a result of which a different IP is given - this is not a problem at all as the

DNS takes care of it and your website is still accessible when you type a domain name!

For SSL however you need to have one IP address/number for all times.

If you are likely to require these features in the future do check with your web hosting

company if they are offering these(Mahabalix offers these features - you can check our

prices by visiting the portal)


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Script Installations

This is not an absolute must but may be helpful if your hosting provider gives you some

script installer in your account.

Fantastico, Softaculous are the dominant ones (Mahabalix provides Softaculous). What

they essentially do is that they install a script such as Joomla for you. Most of the scripts

are provided are open source- with an installer you have a few added benefits that it

does the installation for you. Besides you mayget lots of scripts which are generally not

available for free if looked for separately.


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More advice

Payment

Whenever you decide to buy a hosting account, if you can afford it at the time of

purchase I recommend you to buy a deal lasting about one year because that`s a

standard Domain Registration period.

It is generally a bad idea to pay monthly as it would definitely be more expensive. You

might think that you will buy the hosting period for one month and decide whether you

wish to continue with the same provider or not. Statistics say most people tend to renew

their accounts with the same provider. Of those who change their hosting companies,

they tend to do so after a period of one year(Note that you might not even have a

functional website even after 6 months of buying hosting). As such it is better to make a

purchase for a longer term.

But I also recommend that you do not buy for extremely long periods, such as 4 years. It

is a waste of money if you want to change your provider later on(You never know what

will happen to the company next, the company policies may change, product features

may change and evolve, better companies may come up)

Also it is a small headache to each time edits the DNS to associate your domain name

with hosting from another provider.


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Conclusion

The number of features available today in typical web hosting accounts, and the

number of features advertised are really endless, but this small guide should cover all

the really important features that you should not miss while shopping for web hosting

accounts.


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Copyright@Mahabalix Software Solutions Ltd 2012 Mahabalix Software Solutions is a

software company based at Curepipe, Mauritius.

www.mahabalix.com

You can download this EBook for free by registering at hosting.mahabalix.com. Visit

Mahabalix.com for your hosting needs, business solutions and custom operating

systems requirement.

Do write [email protected] the ebook! Suggestions article

contributions etc are welcome. (You will be added as co-author!)
http://www.mahabalix.com/http://www.mahabalix.com/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.mahabalix.com/


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