Everyone has different needs when looking for shared web hosting. You will need a certain amount of space and bandwidth for your website. You may also need databases, add-on domains, sub-domains and e-mail accounts. You should check with the host that the package will meet your needs.

Over Selling Resources

A small website will not need many resources; however people are caught in the headlights by large numbers. A large majority of web hosts on the Internet oversell their services. You may have come across plans that include 500GB Space and 2TB of bandwidth, this is overselling. If you were to actually use all these resources I’m sure the host would soon close your account on the grounds of “high CPU usage”. There is no need to get lots of space and bandwidth, simply get what you need at a moderate price.

Resource Limits

Most shared hosting will have resource limitations such as CPU etc. This means that you can only use X% resources for your site for X amount of time. If you are running scripts, check that they can run in the time limits set by the host. You should also check database size limits, and outgoing e-mail limits that may be in place.

You may only be able to have a database up to so many MB. If you have a forum then this is likely to grow and you may need to upgrade so you might want to plan ahead and see how easy upgrades are going to be. E-mail limits may be set hourly which means you can only send for example 200 e-mails an hour.

Reseller Hosts

Reseller hosting makes it easy for anyone to setup a web host. This means you need to check to see how reliable the host is. The last thing you want is a weeks hosting before the person running it ditches their hosting site leaving you with no money and no hosting. To avoid this look for a host that has good reviews from others and is well established. If you are insistent on going for a certain host check how long they have been operating for, if they are a registered business and you may also check there PayPal transaction rating if this is available.

More on Reviews

There are many review sites that you can take a look at, however it is likely that the host themselves have added their website to allow reviews. This also implies that they have the ability to edit and remove reviews that have been left. The best place to get reviews is from existing customers – how obvious was that? You can do this by running reverse IP on the hosts IP address. This will allow you to get some of the web addresses on that hosts server.

Hopefully you will not get other sites run by the host so check the WHOIS info to different details and send an e-mail to the site owner asking about the service. You may also want to Google terms such as “hosts name reviews” or “hosts name scam” to see what comes up. Forums are another good place to ask, however if someone simply keeps saying the host is great, check the website URL that they have hosted with the host to ensure they are not just self promoting.

Up time

Up time is very important in hosting and now many hosts have a service level agreement that ensure you receive X% of up time. You may want to use external monitors to see what the up time for a web host is like. The only real way to find the truth is to ask previous customers due to some monitoring sites allowing hosts to remove outages from statistics.

Support

This is one of the most important things in hosting. Check what types of support are available. Do they have Phone, E-mail, Instant Messenger, REAL Live Chat or Ticket Support? If there is a problem with your website you want it sorted asap so ensure that the facilities are there for you to receive help when you need it. Ensure their after sales support is as good as their before sales.

Summary

Always go with a host that has a good reputation for up time, pricing and customer service. New hosts with great deals might to be around for too long due to lack of experience. It only takes one thing to go wrong with a small host that removes their budget for servers so ensure that your host is there to stay.

Those are a few basic things to look out for; more advanced users may wish to check that the server IP is not black listed and that they have a good server infrastructure etc.

Robots.txt file is used to tell search engines what they are allowed to access on your website. The purpose of this is to stop search engines listing private and sensitive data such as admin login areas.

If you are happy to let search engines visit all files and folders that exist with your website then you do not need to use a robots.txt file. If you do not need to block any content then do not have a robots.txt file on your website.

If the file is incorrectly coded then you run the risk of blocking important content that you may want search engines to list.

If you want a robots.txt file to allow all the content and you really want to have one on your website then create a txt file called robots.txt and enter the following:

User-agent: *

Disallow:

For more information about robots.txt see here!

Once you have created a favicon you need to upload the filename.ico to your web server.

Then to add a favicon to your website you simply need to insert the following line of HTML code into the head section of your web page.

<link href=”/images/favicon.ico” rel=”shortcut icon” />

After you have done this, refresh your browser and if all is correct the favicon will appear. Some browsers update much quicker than others.

iUKHost would like to wish everybody a very merry Christmas & a happy new year.

If you want to get high quality website traffic then you need to use off page SEO (search engine optimization) techniques. To generate a continuous steam of web traffic to your website you need to create link building strategies.

To get a very large amount of website traffic you will need to have your website ranked on the first pages of search engine results pages (SERPs). To achieve this you need to have a high quality website that has unique content with keywords relating to your websites topic. It is imperative to have key phrases and well written content is useful and no copied. Having these things will encourage a continuous flow of traffic to your website. By having a website that generates interest, other websites will link to it and the chances are that those linking to your article will have a website of a similar topic. High quality back links such as these will push your website up SERPs.

If you have written a web page and it is no appearing on the first few pages on search engines for the keywords of your choice then the chance of getting large traffic numbers decreases dramatically. When a user searches for something on the Internet it is unlikely that they will check past the third page of results so you should make it your gaol to be in this section.

After creating a unique article with keywords and good SEO techniques you should strive to gain back links of a high quality. These back links to your website should not just be to your homepage; they should also be to deep internal pages. This can be achieved by writing genuine useful comments on blogs and forums with a link back to your site. You can submit your website to web directories that are free and paid ones if you wish. You may also want to take advantage of Google Adwords.

As the number of visitors increases and you first start to see traffic you need to do everything in your power to keep them coming back to your website. This will then provide constant traffic to your website and increase the popularity of your website. It is logical to only carry out free techniques to increase traffic at first until you have some revenue to invest in paid methods.

A dedicated IP address, or a static IP is a unique IP address that is related to only one website. With a dedicated IP address a website can be viewed online by typing this into the web browser. There are two main different types of IP hosting, one is where a shared IP is used which involves many websites being hosted under one IP. The alternative is to get a dedicated IP address under which only one website is hosted.

Many web hosting companies can provide you with a dedicated IP address. The primary use for a dedicated IP address is to enable SSL (Secure Socket Layer) on your website so that data can be encrypted.

If you want to start a web hosting business you will first need have the required resources that will be needed for the day to day running of the business. The resources that you need will depend upon the type of web hosting that you wish to offer your customers and how large you want your business to be. It is important for a web hosting provider to appreciate the importance of good customer service to the clients that you provide web hosting to. You will need to ensure that you have the resources to provide a high level of customer service at all times.

Starting a web hosting business is not an overnight task although many people believe that all you need to do is get a reseller account and proceed from there. The reality is that there are many obstacles along the way that need to be overcome in order to setup and honest professional web hosting company. To ensure that you web hosting business has good online organisation you will need to have a clear website along with third party software packages so that you can keep track of customer information. You will also need to invest in support systems to make it easy for customers to contact you.

Reseller Account or a Server?

If you are decided upon starting a web hosting company then you will have to plan how you are going to proceed with setting up your business. There are a few options to choose from whether you pick a reseller account, VPS server or a dedicated server. To start a web hosting company you will need at least one of these to provide your customer with a web hosting account. Your investment budget will affect your choice so you should plan ahead for the future to ensure that you will be able to cover the recurring costs if you rent your hardware. As a beginner or a small web hosting company it will be more beneficial for you to start off with a reseller account. By choosing a reseller account you can lower your start up costs therefore lowering the risk of losing money. There are other advantages to reseller accounts which are listed below:

• Low Running Costs – The cost of a web hosting reseller account is a lot less than that of a VPS or dedicated web server. In the case of most reseller accounts they include third party applications and a control panel already installed so you do not have to pay extra for these. With a VPS or dedicated web server the cost of the control panel is usually billed at an extra monthly charge.
• Server Management – The management of the server that your reseller account is on is usually taken care of by your web hosting provider. This means that you can start up your web hosting business with limited technical knowledge until your skills grow.
• Free Support – Most reseller hosting accounts come with free support so if there is an issue with one of your customers accounts your web hosting will resolve the issue for you. If you have a VPS or dedicated server you will have root access which means you can make changes and solve issues yourself. There are managed VPS and dedicated packages available so your web host can take care of things as well if you are unsure.

Web Hosting Business Costs

As a new business just starting out you should know it is imperative to keep start up costs as low as possible. Reseller web hosting is therefore the ideal solution to achieve this. If you have customers or want to be able to offer customers a wider variety of options with your web hosting plans then a VPS or dedicated web server is the better choice. Although there is a higher cost incurred with VPS or dedicated servers you are provided with the following advantages:

• Root Access  – With VPS and a dedicated server solution you should be provided with root access to the server which means that you can manage it yourself and enable you to install applications of your choosing. A customer may require a setting changing on the server and this may not be possible with a reseller account.
• Dedicated Resources- With a VPS or dedicated server you will get RAM and CPU resources dedicated to you. This means that you do not need to share these like you would with a reseller account.

Any of the above discussed types of hosting are suitable to start your own web hosting business. A shared web hosting package would be an unsuitable choice for a hosting business because you are not able to create individual accounts. If you are a web designer / developer then you may choose to host your clients websites under your own shared hosting plan however a reseller plan allows you to split them up for better management.

Web Hosting Support

If you are running a web hosting business then you need to be able to communicate effectively with your customers. If you customer has a problem with their hosting package you should be available to help them get the issue resolved. There are a variety of communication methods that you could use to communicate with your customers. Most web hosting companies will use web based contact methods to communicate with customers, an example of this is e-mail. As the owner it is your choice as to which methods you have available to your customers. As a new business you may not need to provide 24/7 support and this may also be an unnecessary cost. You might not want to provide phone support either and just stick to web based contact methods such as:

• Web Based Support Ticket System – Many web hosting providers will use a third party software to provide support to their customers. These packages allow customers to raise a ticket with the problem that they have and then the web host replies to that ticket with the solution.
• E-mail – Stand e-mail can be used to contact your customers about problems that they may be experiencing with their web hosting packages.
• Online Forums – You may wish to install some forum software onto your hosting website so that your customers can register and communicate with each other. Customers may use to forum to ask questions regarding their web hosting packages. It is important to moderate the content on the forum so that no spamming occurs.

You will find that communication is a very important part of web hosting and if you do not get this right customers may move to another web host. As a start up phone support is not imperative however as your business grows it should be considered so that all customers can contact you with a method that they prefer.

Complete Guide to Starting a Web Host

If you want a step by step guide to starting your own web hosting company you may wish to read this eBook. This eBook has great information all about how to start your own web hosting company! Get great inside knowledge from an industry expect along with SEO tips and tricks plus lots more! Learn more here about how to start a web host!

Anonymous FTP is used to allow a user to access files from anywhere on the Internet without the requirement of a user name and password. Using the user name “anonymous” the user will bypass local network security settings and be able to access publicly available files on a remote host. If you are running your own FTP server you can grant access to users to allow them to download files.

Anonymous FTP provides access to any folder that has the permissions set to public whether these are read or write. Users will have access to upload and download files from the server if they have the correct permissions. It is advisable to configure the folders that you want them to access with public permissions. Other folders you do not want to allow anonymousaccess to should be configured to private. It is possible not only to configure directories but individual files too. If there was one file in a directory that you want to stop access to then you can by editing the permissions. Correct setup of permissions will ensure that anonymous FTP users only access data that you want them to.