Web Hosting

You can run MySQL as a server in your local device or in a remote server. All you need to access your MySQL databases and MySQL functionality is your server name (such as the name server of your MySQL web hosting provider) or the appropriate IP address. You can then input your various commands, most likely using PHP scripts, to interact with your various databases. These commands are written on programming scripts.

When choosing a MySQL web hosting provider, you’ll want to consider some additional factors beyond the standard uptime, backup/redundancy systems, bandwidth, email, and bandwidth concerns.

* Databases: If you’re seeking a MySQL web hosting provider such as Yahoo Web Hosting, you’re surely planning on making databases a significant part of your web-presence. You therefore need to find a MySQL hosting provider that offers you at least as many data structures as you might need. A host that promotes itself as a MySQL hosting provider must offer its clients with multiple websites at least five databases.

* Interface: You'll be working with your databases intimately and frequently. You'll want a MySQL hosting provider that's designed its admin interface with the MySQL user in mind. If you have various staff-members involved in the building and maintenance of your various tables and databases, you'll want to be able to create multiple user I.D.'s to allow varying degrees of secure access. CPanel is a good administrative dashboard to have for MySQL databases.

* CRON support: A cron helps you to run specific scripts for regular, routine tasks to be run at periodic intervals. A MySQL hosting provider should allow you to set up and manage crons from your admin control panel. These scripts are also good for Preventive Maintenance routines.

* PHP Info: The most common script for MySQL databases is PHP. A MySQL hosting provider with PHP extensions enabled is likely to be more frustrating than useful to you. By checking into a prospective MySQL hosting provider's PHP capabilities, you can ensure compatibility between your scripting language and your database management, thus saving yourself tons of trouble and loads of regrets later on.

Remember, if you are running MySQL databases; make sure that you get a host that specializes in MySQL hosting.

So you think you want to start up a website.  Prior posts from me were about domain name choice and website creation.  Which brings the subject of hosting into play:  Choosing a hosting plan is a primary step in launching your fledgling web presence.

Once you have created the pages for your website, now you want to publish it to the internet.  To have your website seen on the internet you will need to choose a hosting plan.  By purchasing a domain name you have branded, or named your website.  You own the name, but now you must pay rent to someone to actually get your website online.  In it’s simplest terms a hosting plan is paying a company to broadcast your website onto the internet.  The key considerations for choosing a good hosting plan will be discussed here.

SERVICE  The number one thing to look for in a hosting plan is service.  Bells and whistles and fancy features will do you no good if you can’t get customer service in a timely fashion.  After you have published, or “gone live” on the internet, the last thing you want is for the website to go down and become unavailable to potential customers.  Therefore should a problem occur it is important to select a hosting provider that is readily available and will resolve the issue in as timely a manner as possible.

UPTIME  What is the hosting company’s “uptime guarantee”? The better hosting providers will offer up to 99% uptime.  That sounds great, but it does mean that your site could go down for 1% of the time, which means over 7 hours out of each month! The best hosting providers will have a track record of up to 99.9% uptime, which essentially guarantees you that downtime is negligible or even non-existent.

SIZE  How large is your site?  The amount of disk space all of your website’s pages takes up will determine the size of the hosting plan you will need.  Most websites do not require much space but if you’re planning on having a large site with a lot of multimedia content or an ecommerce site selling multiple items, you’ll probably need additional disk space on your hosting plan.

LINUX OR WINDOWS  Which operating system should your hosting plan use?  BTW it does not matter what operating system you are using on your personal computer.  What programming language was used in the Web site design?  For example, if you designed a website using ASP or ASP.NET, you’ll need to find a Windows hosting plan. If you have a Web site that uses CGI or PHP, you’ll need to get a Linux hosting plan.  Note that if you are simply publishing a basic html website, the choice of hosting Operating system won’t really matter as much until you get into more advanced languages such as PHP or ASP.

TRAFFIC  How much traffic or how many visitors do you expect monthly?  Hosting plans are usually sold at different level plans according to the bandwith that will be required.  Bandwidth = Traffic.  The more visitors or traffic you expect on your site, the higher the bandwidth you will need, and the more the plan will cost.  The best advice here is to start off with a low cost, low bandwidth plan and upgrade it later as the traffic to your website grows.

SHARED OR DEDICATED HOSTING  Whether or not to choose shared hosting over dedicated hosting comes down to the following:  A shared hosting plan is exactly as it sounds, and means that your website will be stored on a server along with lots of other websites.  In this hosting format you generally have no ability to make changes to the resident software on the system, meaning you cannot change or upgrade the operating system, or the database management system, etc.  You will have to work within the software structure provided by the hosting company.  Using dedicated (or virtual dedicated) hosting means that you have full control over the server your website is stored on and that only your data occupies the space on that server.  In other words, you would determine what operating system to use, what type database management software, what type of blog software, what type shopping cart, etc., etc.  This type of hosting is definitely geared to the more advanced user, and usually you won’t be able to get as much customer support because it will be a custom setup.  The best advice I can give to the newbie is to use shared hosting at first, until you gain more experience and abilities and are ready to take the plunge into something as advanced as dedicated hosting.

At StartYourWebsiteToday.com I offer 99.9% guaranteed uptime and offer customer service 24/7.  The hosting plans that are offered include a variety: shared hosting, virtual dedicated hosting, and dedicated hosting plans with either Linux or Windows operating systems for every need and budget ranging from the small personal website to large online multimedia sites to those interested in ecommerce website building. To see what is available, click HERE: Hosting plans.

There are different types of affordable web hosting services that you can choose from depending on what type of web development and web site that you want to host.

Dial-Up Access Hosting: This is the most basic access/hosting service and these providers also provides a web page for hosting your site. Dial-up access hosting was the first hosting available and is still around. Most ISP’s specialize in just internet access and it’s rare that you will see an ISP do both. These companies make their money off of providing access to the Internet.

Development Hosting – Web developers are buying their own servers and offering independent hosting services for their clients. This is called development hosting in which they provide web development services along with a host server located at their place of business. The consumer gets charged for the development and the maintenance of the web-site.

Web-Hosting ISP’s. These are companies that specialize in hosting business web sites such as Yahoo business hosting or Hostgator. There is no dial up access needed and site owners access their pages via File Transfer Protocol (FTP). This is what the majority of small businesses use to put their site information on the internet. Other services are also included in the Web Hosting ISP package depending on their service plans.

These types of hosting plans are usually for corporations that need a lot of bandwidth to run their web applications. These companies run T1 access lines for big packets of internet data and have multiple connections to an internet backbone. They have fully staffed data processing facilities and the prices are substantial for using these types of services.

Corporate/Industrial Hosting – Companies like Hewlett Packard, Dell or IBM, run the server infrastructure for most of these host companies.

The SOHO business owner will usually need the Web-Hosting ISP services. It is the middle ground between the basic and advanced services.

If you are serious about doing internet business, choosing your web host could be one of the most critical decision that you have to make.

You need to make sure your webhost:

1. Is up to date. In the hosting world, there are new upgrades every day. It is worth it to stay current.

2. You need to know for certain that your webhost has excellent record with regard to redundancy and downtime.

3. Use standard settings and standard softwares. You don’t want to be checking up the help files and calling support every time you want to install something on the server just because your webhost does things differently from the mainstream.

4. Allows unlimited domain hosting. Any plans that omit this feature is not worth it – whatever the price. It is only natural that once you start going into internet marketing, you will collect large number of domains. I know I did.

The trick in choosing is to ignore all the trivial features and focus just on these 4 factors when choosing a webserver. Forget about those “30 days free trial” or “first year for $1″ stuff. All these pale in insignificance compared to the amount of time and effort that you are going to put working with the web host over the years – and you better make sure your choice is solid.

It is important not to be sidetracked by the marketing gimmicks because although theoretically, you can change your webhost anytime, it is the internet marketing equivalent of doing root canal without anesthesia.

Just make sure you get the above 4 factors solidly taken care of so you can focus your energy and attention on all the other million things that need to be done when running the business online.

I personally have used Hostgator for more than 5 years now and it has taken care of me well. There are other equally good ones out there but I am not in the position to vouch for them as I have not been a long term customer.

However, keep it simple and stick to the above guidelines and you should be fine.

Are you finding the internet marketing is overloading you with information? Cut through the chase and check out our webhost advice and other reviews.

There are various types of web hosting services and it all depends on what you want to accomplish in building your web-site for your business. You should look at the different options which depend on these following factors:

Complexity of your web-site ?You may want to talk to a developer on the complexity of your web-site, especially when it comes to graphics and database administration. You may have to consult with an internet specialist on the type of hosting that you need.

Some web hosting services are provided for free but you have to put up with ads that are on the top or bottom of your web site and those ads might not be conducive to the web site that you have developed. If you are going to get a site with ads, then get a free web hosting package that matches with the online ad that’s already there.

Free hosting also has low bandwidth on the internet because of so many people using the free service instead of the paid service. Basically, you also get a free web email account with free hosting services.

Then there is hosting such as yahoo web hosting that you pay for that you have more control over when you load and host your web site. You get POP mail access and can create as many emails as you want to which depends on the type of account that you pay for.

Every company has special packages for each and every need. From personal to business servers, even servers for special kinds of operating systems (UNIX, Windows, Linux and Apple) the choices vary depending on what you want to do.

The prices depend on how much space you need on the server to load your applications so you have to take into consideration what you want to put on the server through your web-site.

There are some good deals on the internet concerning web space and hosting but you have to look to find the best deals. You should also consider how long a provider has been in business.

Finding free web space on the Internet is simple. All you have to do is use a simple Web search (Google, AltaVista or Yahoo) and the results should bring back options for free web hosting There are many individuals and businesses looking for a place to put their website without having to pay for the service. These free services can provide anywhere from 5MB to 100Mb of online web space for hosting your web site.

Free sites also come with some cool stuff, such as counters, guest books, virtual domain names, tracking logs, blogs, copy and past scripts that are usually Java code scripts and more. These additions are good for people that have little or no knowledge into building a web site.

A free web hosting service provides benefits to all people and may sound like a good idea but the goal is to do your research to see if the deals are viable or not. Free services can also bring other unwanted things that you have to deal with when you sign up for the service. Usually, you have to submit to advertising and surveys by filling out a form before you can get your free service. Be sure that you read the user agreements that come with the free services.

You can go on the cheap and don’t want advertisements running on your site, you can get a service similar to free web hosting but you would have to pay a small fee to keep your web page ad-free.Some of these providers will offer you a service for $2.95 a month with 100MB of web space if that’s all that you need, and you can always upgrade your packages.

There’s a lot of competition for your Web site hosting dollars, and you can find some pretty good deals if you look hard enough.

Windows/ XP Web hosting provides web hosting on Windows operating system platform. Microsoft Corporation provides host based software operating system for servers. Windows XP web hosting programs are considered to be easy to cope with, reliable and inexpensive.

The simplicity of the Windows XP operating system is what stands out with these applications. Windows provides its users with friendly, familiar environment that is easy to work with. Today as so much work has been done by developers it’s very easy to administrate your site with using Windows/ Server Side operating system. The Windows/NT platform is also reliable. You also should know that reliability of any platform, same as Windows/NT platform, depends mainly on maintenance and technical knowledge.

Windows/XP platform is scalable and very cost-effective because at a relatively low price you can set up a fully functional Internet server with Windows XP in a matter of hours.

The big question is what do you want your web-site to do? Interactive websites usually rely on ASP (Active Server Pages which allow scripts on a web page to be run on the server before the files are transmitted to the client), PHP, or Perl (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language which is a scripting language used for receive and process data stored on web page forms).

And if you prefer ASP most of all Windows/ XP – based web hosting is the perfect choice for you. There are also some more only Windows available applications such as Access, MS SQL, Windows Media and Virtual Basic scripts. Windows XP offers benefits over other operating systems. Using these benefits gives you an opportunity to be productive and publish your information on the Internet rapidly developing your website or web application.

Windows XP server packages have great programs for individuals who are familiar with MS Windows XP software. Yahoo web hosting server package for hosting even allows for optimization of hard disk space and RAM which eliminates computer lock-ups while loading web applications.

Yahoo! small business web hosting is a safe and effective way to access the Internet with your small business web site.  They offer three packages that are reasonable and geared toward the demands of small businesses.  Yahoo! is considered the number one internet brand across the globe and reaches the largest worldwide audience; this translates into your website being available to the largest audience, which in turns increases your exposure and your business worldwide.  No more will you be considered the tiny little “Mom and Pop’s on the corner. 

For the Smaller Business Owner

Yahoo! web hosting offers it’s first package, called the “starter”, for the reasonable rate of $8.96.  This package provides a free domain name, free set up fee, a disk space of 5 GB, 200 GB data transfer rate, 100 sub-domains, 200 email addresses and 24 hour support – seven days a week.

Growth in Business Equals Larger Demands

The second Yahoo! web hosting package, the “standard”, is $14.95 per month and is a step above the “starter” package.  The increased charges reflect a larger product offering in that the disk space increases to 10 GB, as does the data transfer rate at 400 GB.  The sub-domains increase to 2000 and your account is given 500 email addresses.  Customer support remains the same at 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

The Top of the Line

The third and final package that Yahoo! web hosting offers is the “professional”.  For $29.96 per month, this package is by far the largest of the three and would benefit a larger business.  As with the previous two, the domain name and set up fees are free.  However, the disk storage space is 20 GB, the data transfer rate is 500 GB, there are 500 dub-domains, 1000 email addresses and the always offered 24 hour, seven days per week customer service.

Yahoo Business Web Hosting Offers A Lot For Very Little

There is no doubt that the Yahoo! web hosting offers a large variety of options for the small business owner.  It is especially helpful to those that are just starting beginning in the internet/web site business arena, as their customer service is top-notch and available 24 hours per day.  Yahoo! has been in business for many year, Developing over the last eight years into the leading Internet business service company worldwide.This type of history proves that they are reliable and will not suddenly disappear one day after taking your time and money to get established.

Dedicated server hosting gives you complete control of the server hosting your web site. Dedicated Servers allow you to choose what runs on the server, its security levels and any configuration settings. Different dedicated server operating systems are available and the main two operating systems used are Linux and Windows.

Linux Dedicated Server Hosting

The free operating system of Linux is installed on these servers, as the name implies. The main configuration setup of software on a cheap linux dedicated server is to use Apache as the web server, in addition to PHP and mySQL. On these servers, root access will be given to control all aspects including php setup configuration, operating system patches and apache add on settings. Linux servers are typically cheaper than the windows servers, as the operating system does not cost the service provider anything.

Windows Dedicated Server Hosting

Windows servers are normally running a version of the Windows Server operating system. You will normally see the newest version of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 running on these servers. The common configuration setup for a Windows server is different than a Linux server as it runs IIS as the web server and SQL server to handle database requirements. A Windows dedicated web server is able to run a WAMP (Windows, Apache, mySql, PHP) configuration. On average most servers running Windows do have a higher monthly cost due to the licensing fees the service provider needs to pay for the operating system.

The reason to pick Linux or Windows for your dedicated server really will depend on the server owners needs. Different requirements will lead to different server selection. From a price standpoint Linux dedicated server plans will be more inexpensive than a Windows server. Linux servers will also be the first choice for those running PHP applications requiring a mySql database. If you plan to develop using Microsoft .Net, you will need to select a Windows Server, and you will typically get SQL server database with it. The choice ultimately depends on what you will be running on the server.

While you have chosen the operating system, you will then need to decide if you want to pick a managed or unmanaged dedicated server solutions. If you want to handle everything including patches and configuration, you will want to go with an unmanaged server leaving all the responsibility with you, while a managed server will take care of this for you, including server backups for a lot of them.

You surf the web all the time and you are always coming across web sites that make you want to stay there. They make you want to buy whatever product they’re selling or they make you want to read whatever information they are trying to convey. In fact, even though some of these websites are free, by having sponsors and providing ad space, some of these web site managers are making quite a bit of money, just for having people visit their site. Have you ever looked at a website and said to yourself that you could do that? Do you think you have what it takes to make a great website but don’t know where to start? The first thing you need to consider when thinking about web site or hosting services is what kind of web site you want to create.

E-Commerce Or Information

Some people use their web site or hosting services for e-commerce. This is where you sell a product or service online. E-commerce web hosting services allow people to use their credit or debit cards, and sometimes even online payment services, such as PayPal, to pay for the products. It’s a great way of doing business. You just sit back while people surf, shop and buy. You don’t need to stand all day in a store, all you need to do is sit home and collect a paycheck.

If your web site or hosting services involves information, such as a how-to page or a gossip page, you can still make money. By providing ad space on your site, you get paid every time someone clicks on one of your sponsors. If your site is especially popular, then you can make quite a bit of money just from ad revenue. That way, your site remains free for your customers yet you get paid for them visiting. What could be better than that?

Now that you have the web site in mind, you have to think about hosting services. A web site or hosting service will host your website so that all you have to sit back and make sure that everything runs smoothly. You can even find some web site or hosting services such as yahoo web hosting who will do the SEO friendly web design for you. With the right look and the right service, you never know, your website could take off and you could end up making a lot of money without doing much work.

Of course, this is the dream of everyone who starts a website so it’s not really that easy. However, sometimes some ideas surpass others so you never know unless you try. Find a web site or hosting service to handle your site and watch the revenue hopefully roll in.