Domain Hosting News and Questions

Loren Squires asked:




Introduction

Very basically, web hosting is renting space, and certain services, on a fairly powerful computer called a ‘server’, or ‘web server’, that is connected to the internet. You cannot have a website online without using some form of web hosting.

Just because your PC or notebook is connected to the internet, does not mean you can run your website from them. It requires certain other hardware and software to ‘host’ a website on the internet.

Companies that offer these internet-connected servers that provide space, and services, are call Web Hosts, or Hosting Companies. Web hosting allows you to have your own website up, running, and connected to the internet 24/7. No matter what your site is, or what it contains, the host will keep it available for anyone on the internet.

The server

Think of a web server as a supercharged desktop PC. One that is capable of handling multiple users and doing multiple tasks at the same time. This server has both hardware and software that is designed from the ground up to serve the internet. A web hosting company may have hundreds, if not thousands of these servers. All available for renting and connected to the internet.

Each one of these servers has a name, these names are called ‘nameservers’. When you sign up for a web hosting account, the hosting company will tell you on which of their web servers your space will be located, that is, they will tell you the nameservers. This is important, because you are going to need to know this bit of information later on down the road.

How to make use of the host

For a web site to be made available on the Internet, it has to be hosted on a web server. But you don’t build or create your website on the server. This is done on your own PC or notebook.

There are various tools available for creating and building websites, there are even good free tools available, but we won’t go into that here. The thing to remember is that you build the site on your own computer, then move it to the web server for hosting, so that its available on the internet.

This moving of your website file(s) from your computer to the web server is called ‘uploading’. You ‘upload’ your files to the internet, that is, to your server.

There is no editing of the files on the web server. If you want to make changes to your website on the internet, you must make the changes to the files on your computer, and then upload the changed files to your web server. This creates a new version.

So now you’re wondering, how do you connect with your web server, and upload the files to it? Good question, you use a kind of software called ‘ftp’ software. This ftp software forms a connection between your computer and the web server at the hosting company.

This software shows you the files and folders on your server, and also shows you the files and folders on your computer. Then it’s a simple matter of dragging and dropping files from your computer to the web server.

Domain Name

Now when talking about web hosting, we also have to mention domains. A domain is a name that you purchase from a ‘domain registrar’. That is, a company that sells domain names, and makes sure that they are all unique. It wouldn’t be a good idea to have multiple websites with the same name. We won’t talk about getting a domain name here, for our purposes right now lets assume you’ve already got a domain name.

Putting the two together

So, you’ve got a domain name. Now you’re wondering what do you do with it, and why does it relate to web hosting? Another good question.

You have to associate that domain name with the space that you are renting from the hosting company. Think of when you move to a new residence. The new house has an address, you have your name, but you have to tell the postman that your name is now to be associated with that address. One without the other is useless.

Web hosting is the same. You have to associate your domain name with the space you’re renting on the web server. This space then becomes your ‘domain’. Your domain is the part after the ‘http://www.’ in your web address.

To make this association you need to tell the company you got the domain name from where you are going to host that domain. That is, you need to tell them the nameservers that your hosting company gave you. That way whenever someone types in your domain name, they will be taken to your domain, hosted on your web servers.

This is how your domain name gets tied to the web servers of your hosting account. This becomes your domain. Its your little piece of internet real estate.

So that is what web hosting is all about. Its renting some space on a web server, then labeling it with your domain name, and then uploading your website files on it so you can have your website on the internet.

Budget web hosting

David Oleszczuk asked:




Do you think any old web hosting company will do? They are all the same anyway, right? That was my philosophy. The cheaper I could get the hosting the better. I found one that had hosting starting at $0.99 per month. Hey, that was the one for me!. So I signed up. That was six years ago. I uploaded my site and everything worked well. Their uptime was good. In the six years, I think the site was only down for a few hours on a couple of different occasions. All was well, so I thought. My site continued to grow and evolve over the years, it was a public school district web site and it ended up being used heavily by the community for the events calendar, announcements, contacting teachers etc.. It ended up being several hundred pages.

Recently I got a phone call from our elementary school secretary. She told me that she could not access the website. I checked it out, and sure enough it was down. Well, I thought, it will probably be up in an hour or so. It is never down more that a couple or hours. Two hours passed, no web site. I decided to email their tech. support department. I sent an email telling them of the problem. Another two hours passed, no web site. I decided to email them again, this time I directed it to the sales department. Yet another two hours passed, no web site and no email response. I emailed the tech. support department again and marked it urgent. Again, no response and no website.

With that I decided to do some checking in hosting forums to see what some of the comments were about this hosting company. Something I should have done before I had chosen them. What an eye opener. they had about as low a rating as you could give for customer support and they didn’t rate much better in any of the other areas. One fellow said that he had been promoting his web site heavily and as soon as he started to get decent traffic to his site, they simple shut it off. He said that if he had lived in the U.S. he definitely would have sued. Another said that they also shut his site off for no reason and would not respond to his emails. Well needless to say, I started to panic, primarily due to the fact that I had just completed a major overhaul of my site and did not yet have a backup of the current site. Visions of many late nights of working feverishly to rebuild everything raced through my head. Just then the site was back up, fully functioning, just as though nothing happened. I was certainly relieved but not to happy about the lack of information or response from the hosting company.

The next morning I opened my email to find a response, finally, from my soon to be ex-hosting company. They basically reamed me out for have sent three emails about the problem. They went on to tell me how “people like me” cause web hosting costs to increase because I force them to read through duplicate emails, wasting their precious time. I managed to hold my composure long enough to reply, telling them that part of customer service is keeping the customer informed and that had they responded to the first email they wouldn’t have received the other two. I received a reply from their sales department that stunned me. It was an email explaining that if I didn’t like their customer support that I should go with a different company and listed the steps I should follow to terminate my account with them.

That did it! I had enough! I began searching for a web hosting company that was rated very highly in dependability and customer service. I began thinking about someone who had a web site which provided their primary source of income. Suppose that site went down without explanation! Or maybe, you have an ad-sense site that you have worked on for years to get to the point where it has significant enough traffic to generate decent revenue. It takes too long to build a website and get traffic to that site to trust it to some cheap hosting company that doesn’t give a flying fig about you, your business or your website. When all was said and done, the new hosting company cost me one dollar a month more and actually has a phone number you can call and speak with a real person in customer support.

In conclusion, the decision of which company to choose for your web-hosting is far more important than I ever realized. Choose a company based on customer reviews and legitimate un-biased hosting review sites. Never go with a hosting company that does not provide a phone number you can call for customer support. Price is certainly important but a few dollars a month is not worth the risk of losing your site, reputation or revenue. Last but not least, backup, backup and backup.

Josh Hatfield asked:




Searching for the top web hosting companies is always a good idea when looking for a new host. However, there are many web hosting companies out there now and as such; there are many less experienced hosts that weasel their way onto Top 10 lists to snatch new customers. Here we will quickly look over a few of the most well known companies that have been in the market for years, delivering excellent service to thousands of people.

Web Host #1 – Just Host

As their name implies, they offer website hosting and are certainly good at what they do. They won’t try and sway you with fancy bonuses or false statements. With 24/7 live support and higher uptime rates than any other provider, it is no wonder they have risen to the top of most web hosting lists. In addition to the great service and support, these guys also offer some of the lowest pricing rates out there.

Web Host #2 – FatCow

FatCow has made its way to the top with its unique brand, cheap prices, excellent support, and great reliability. These guys aim to provide the most user friendly experience in web hosting to date. With a large tutorial database and custom designed cPanel, creating websites has never been easier. As one of the few leading Green hosting companies, FatCow servers are 100% wind powered. Green labels are also available to post on your websites to show how you are helping the environment.

Web Host #3 – HostGator

For over ten years, HostGator has been one of the most well known and respected top web hosting companies due to their low prices, variety of hosting options, quality service, and reliable support. They provide all the tools needed to make your stamp on the web, no matter how small or large your ideas may be. The main complaint HostGator faces is that their pricing is a little bit more than the newer companies but I say it is a few extra dollars well spent.

3D Hosting Web