The Internet is a large collection of computers all connected together in one very bignetwork. A diagram of the Internet looks similar to a spiders web. A website is a place on that web, and website hosting means providing the physical location, the connection and, usually, the computer that “serves” the web site’s content to the PC that requests it. Web servers or computers are installed with special software designed to handle many users and services simultaneously.

The Internet is a global network, which means that communication can occur at any time. This means that a website should be ready to receive visitors at any moment. For this to be achieved there should be a constant connection to the web and a server that is always powered on running a stable environment.

The physical environment where the server is located, often called a Network Operations Center, or NOC is also very important. Data Centres have temperature controls, backup generators, earthquake-resistant architecture, and more, all designed to ensure your site is available at every moment.

When you are creating your website at your home computer, to upload it you need to send the files to your web server. FTP (File Transfer Protocal) is a service that allows you to do this. Once the file is on the server, whenever someone requests that file from the Internet either by typing in the web address or clicking a link, the server gives them the file they requested. Changing the content is as easy as changing the file and re-transferring it to the server.

In addition to web and FTP services, web site hosting almost always includes an email server that will receive email sent to your domain. This enables you to control mail delivery, create your own addresses, and present a professional image to your customers, clients, or constituents.

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.

A web hosting package is used to host a website on the Internet so that it is accessible to the general public from all corners of the globe. There are many different types of web hosting package available to users. The reason that there are many different forms of web hosting package is because there are a great number of features available in web hosting and not all of them can be served under one package.

Control panels are usually included in most web hosting packagesto allow the user to manage their website with ease. A control panel on the web hosting server also makes it much easier for the web host to manage the clients. There are many different control panel software options available to web hosts. cPanel is a very powerful and popular control panel choice for most web hosting companies.

Shared Web Hosting Package

Shared web hosting packages are typically very popular because they are cheap to obtain and easy to manage. The provide a relianle solution to getting a website on the Internet in a short space of time. Shared web hosting is where many websites are all hosted on the same web hosting server.

Reseller Web Hosting Package

A reseller web hosting package allows you to create your own clients accounts and resell web space and other resources allocated to you. If you have restrictions on the number of domains you can host under a shared web hosting account, this may be the solution.

VPS Web Hosting Package

A VPS web hosting package provides you with dedicated server resources without the expense of paying for a full server. You are allocated a virtually created partition of the web server to host your website.

Dedicated Web Hosting Package

A dedicated server web hosting package is one where you are the only user or website using one or more web servers. This provides your website with many server resources which means it does not have to compete with other websites to run smoothly.

It is important that you choose the correct web hosting package for the needs of you and your website. There are many web hosting companies trying to offer you web hosting so ensure that you keep in mind your requirements so that you eventually get the package that is right for you with the correct control panel and features.

Make an effort to plan ahead and check what features you may need for your website in the future. You then need to contact your potential host to ensure that they will be able to meet your requirements.

iUKHost servers are located in world-class Blue Square Data center based in Maidenhead which is 20 Miles West of London, UK.

Data center Network Connectivity

We have a total of 20,000mbits of network connectivity for all our servers. We have 2 x 10 Gbps links for our data center. Each dedicated server in our data center is setup on 100 Mbps, fully-switched port on an edge switch. Each edge switch is then in turn plugged into two separate aggregation switches at 1gbit, with failover redundancy allowing either 1gbit link to fail.

Brand of Chassis/servers

We use only branded chassis from Dell and we use latest state of the art Intel CPU’s for our servers.

ISPs used for network connectivity of data center / Servers. Our network transit connections are currently to Level 3, Tiscali, and Deutsche Telekom. We also peer with approximately 150 ISPs at the peering points LINX, XChangePoint, and LoNAP.

Network Uptime

iUKHost network is normally up 100% of the time but we guarantee that the network will be available at least 99.95% of the time in a calendar month, including scheduled maintenance.

High Security

The data centre was constructed with security in mind. Data center is located inside its own secure compound, with 2.4 and 3 meter fencing and electric gate entry equipped & monitored by CCTV at all times. Access is restricted by proximity reader access that records all access to the data centre, & monitored round the clock with closed circuits.

Hardware Guarantee

The servers deployed at the data center include hardware replacement guarantee. iUKHost guarantees the functioning of all rented hardware components and will replace any failed component at no cost to the customer. Hardware replacement process is usually completed within 24 hours of problem identification.

24/7 Onsite Staffing

Experienced technicians remain onsite for 24/7 monitoring our network and servers.

What is a Blog?

Blogs have become increasingly popular and now most websites have a blog alongside the standard content. Blog is short for Weblog and is used to report on day to day events witht he aid of images, video and text content. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.

What is Blog Hosting?

Blog hosting allows you to host your own blog on your own domain name. You have full control over the blog including its content and its theme. WordPress is a popular blogging solution and this can be installed just by clicking links. This is possible using a feature that is free with our hosting plans called fantastico.

WordPress is very popular and therefore has many themes and plugins that you can implement on your blog to make it unique.

Blog Hosting Features

cPanel Advantages and Blog Hosting

cPanel is great for blog hosting because it gives the end user a graphical user interface (GUI) to control their blog. The blog owner can check visitor statistics, bandwidth usage and disk usage. It is very user friendly and makes taking database backups of your weblog very easy.

Simple Machines Forum, SMF, is a freeware Internet forum script. The script is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database.

SMF is professional grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes.

Its powerful custom made template engine puts you in full control of the lay-out of your message board and with our unique SSI – or Server Side Includes – function you can let your forum and your website interact with each other.

SMF is written in the popular language PHP and uses a MySQL database. It is designed to provide you with all the features you need from a bulletin board while having an absolute minimal impact on the resources of the server. SMF is the next generation of forum software – and best of all it is and will always remain completely free!

Look at our SMF Hosting plans if you want to setup your own SMF forum. With our hosting plans you get Fantastico free which allows you to simply click links to install the software. This means that no manual installation is required.

This is the official SMF Site.

phpBB is a popular Internet forum package written in the PHP scripting language. The name “phpBB” is an abbreviation of PHP Bulletin Board. phpBB is free software so anyone can create a forum.

Millions of people use phpBB on a daily basis, making it the most widely used open source bulletin board system in the world. Whether you want to stay in touch with a small group of friends or are looking to set up a large multi-category board for a corporate website, phpBB has the features you need built in.

phpBB has an extensive administration panel, which allows the customization of even the most intricate features without having to edit code directly, while advanced users will value the ease with which phpBB can be integrated into existing systems.

Look at our phpBB Hosting plans if you want to setup your own phpBB forum. With our hosting plans you get Fantastico free which allows you to simply click links to install the software. This means that no manual installation is required.

This is the phpBB website where you can download the software.

If you are in a band or group and need web hostingto promote yourselves then look no further. iUKHost offer cheap web hosting services where you can upload your bands website.

With the iUKHost LSH2 Plan there is 500mb of disk space and 5GB of bandwidth. The package comes complete with cPanel that allows you to control your website all for £24.99 a year.

300MB Web Disk Space

This is the amount of disk space that you are allocated on the server. You can upload many web pages, images, video files etc at any time.

3GB Data Transfer per Month

Everytime your website is accessed, data is sent across the Internet. This is your limit of data transfer. The more visitors that your website has the more transfer will be used. This is the same if you have large image or video files loading on your website.

E-mail Features

You can setup an unlimited number of e-mail accounts that are each password protected. You can access these by configuring your mail client such as Outlook or by using webmail applications such as Horde Mail, Squirrel Mail or RoundCube Webmail.

Control Panel

You can manage every part of your website from the easy to use control provided with your hosting account. Using cPanel you can configure e-mail, databases, domains, files and install scripts.

Domain Registration or Transfer

We can register a domain on your behalf or you can transfer your current domain name to us.

Alcester Web Hosting