Managed Dedicated Hosting for Your Business Web Site By Ben Ingham

Managed Dedicated Hosting for Your Business Web Site

By: Ben Ingham

If you business has outgrown shared hosting usually the next step in the upgrade is a managed dedicated server. This type of hosting allows you rent your own server. This hosting provider typically maintains a stock of servers and will operate its own network and data center. The important point is that this server is for your exclusive use only, you do not share resources with other users or websites.

If you don’t have the in house technical experience, you could consider hiring a technical person to handle these tasks if you feel the self managed server is what your business needs. Check out the many freelancing sites where you could advertise for additional system administration work. Unless you have some technical experience with web servers you may struggle to perform your own server management and administrative tasks. However your host may be able to perform additional task at an additional hourly rate.

With Managed dedicated hosting the hosting provider gives very basic technical support and basic system help. They will have technicians on site on a 24 hour basis in order to carry out a reboot of your server if neccessary. Increasing numbers of dedicated server providers give access to a “reboot switch” or offline management. In most instance you still have complete technical control thee server, and additionally you will also have access to optional managed services such as an upgrading service, security hardening, firewalls, and online backup services

Managing your server and carrying out routine tasks such as setting up users and creating mail boxes much easier if you install a “control panel.” The most popular control panels are Cpanel (Web Host Manager) Plesk, Helm and H-Sphere. A server without a control panel is sometimes known as a “root server.” If this is a Linux server this will often require command line expertise. Dedicated hosting providers usually offer a choice of operating systems which are usually Windows 2003 and Linux (Centos, Ubuntu, Fedora etc).

When deciding on an unmanaged dedicated server or a managed server, explore all options before making a decision. Online review sites and forums make it easier to research the various hosting companies and find out what is on offer. Quite often its better to go for quality of service rather than price, as the old adage that you get what you pay for applies to dedicated server hosting, as with anything else.

About the Author:

Ben Ingham is a Windows Dedicated Server Administrator and Managed Dedicated Servers

1and1 Web Hosting Review

1and1 Web Hosting Review

by GNC Web Creations

To begin with, we made the decision to move just a few of our domains to 1and1, on a trial basis. With plans priced as low as $3.99 a month we found packages available to meet and exceed the needs of most anyone.

After taking the time to carefully look through the various 1and1 hosting packages, we decided that the Linux based Developer Package would best meet our needs to start out with. It had all the features we wanted, along with plenty of space and bandwidth.

Although we initially felt that the control panel was a bit on the slow side, the extensive services and features provided have gone well beyond our expectations. With 1and1 having so many positive aspects, the speed of the control panel has proved to be little more than a minor inconvenience for us.

We had a few occasions where we needed to call technical support for clarifications on how to implement a few techniques. We were pleasantly surprised to find the techs to be refreshingly helpful and courteous. Time spent on hold was minimal.

Overall, we are very pleased with the hosting services provided by 1and1. So much so, that we have since moved the majority of our domains, along with several client sites.

If your web host increases your fees for hosting multiple domains in the same account, you may want to seriously consider a new host that can meet your business needs. We use 1and1 for the vast majority of our websites and buy many of our domains there too.

One major benefit of this hosting company is that you can set up multiple websites for your domains (within one account) without increasing the cost. How cool is that?

Consider taking a look at 1and1 to see if they may have a hosting plan that is perfect for you! Contact us with your questions about what to look for in a hosting company or even if you just need help choosing which plan would be best for your specific situation.

In January of 2006 we added a level III Managed Dedicated Server to our account, that we are very pleased with. We truly do recommend 1and1 for all of your hosting needs, even when those needs reach the point of outgrowing a shared server.

Choosing the Right Company for Your Web Hosting Needs

Choosing the Right Company for Your Web Hosting Needs
By: Bob Willis

Before you sign up for just about any random web hosting company, it is important to evaluate and ascertain the levels of your hosting requirements, set a hosting budget, familiarize yourself with various aspects, features and tools of a hosting account and only then should you go searching for a professional and superior web hosting company. Given that there are a vast number of hosting companies out there; searching for a host of your choice that perfectly fits your budget could be a daunting task, especially for the novice web owner. While pricing is a predominant factor that comes into play, there are many other factors that need to be considered when you go shopping for a web host.If you plan to host just a few simple pages that do not require e-commerce or multimedia enabled features, then usually the most basic hosting package (like shared hosting) would be best suited for you. The basic packages are usually reasonably priced and offer all the required features and tools, bandwidth and disk space that would be sufficient to host your site and perhaps much more.For websites like small to medium sized businesses would want to either consider advanced shared hosting packages or the dedicated hosting package. This is because the nature of these websites would naturally require higher levels of hosting features, bandwidth and disk space. These websites are likely to receive higher amounts of traffic, would feature considerable amount of downloadable data and would also require ample room for growth. Therefore, the advanced hosting packages would be able to furnish these hosting requirements.It is a good idea to involve in online interactive forums and blogs so that you could read user reviews and testimonials and then make a well-informed decision about choosing the right hosting provider. One aspect that cannot be overlooked while host searching, is the level and quality of customer support offered. The quality of support offered can either make or break your website. Think of it this way. If your website goes down due to some technical error or other unforeseen crisis, the company needs to have a solid contingency plan in place. Furthermore, you should have 24/7 access to their customer support system in order to keep abreast with the latest news and information as well as have your issues and queries addressed promptly. This would help you save ample money and time or else you would soon find yourself searching for yet another web host. In order to obviate this, a good amount of research and analysis plays a vital role in host searching.

Top Free Web Hosting Companies

Top Free Web Hosting Companies
By: Bob Willis

While free web hosting may be looked upon as a restrictive platform to host your website, it does offer an online presence for amateurs or for people who wish to host simple personal web pages. We have compiled a list of the top free web hosting companies by category:• Template Driven: Weebly.comA website that offers templates are best suited for customers who wish to establish an instant online presence. The customer is only required to choose a template of his/her choice and then customize it with their content. All the hard work is therefore taken care of by the web host. So if you are looking for template based hosting then Weebly has some very exciting features to offer. In fact, the company was recognized as the top website of 2007 by Time Magazine. The customer is not required to download any kind of software whatsoever and the online tools allow you customize your webpage and its content.• Highly Customizable: freehostia.com/free_hosting.htmlYou may want to consider FreeHostia if you wish to create your web pages right from scratch and don't want to be necessarily limited to templates. The company offers a set of exceptionally flexible features and tools required to build your website. Experienced or advanced web masters also have access to their PHP or Perl scripting.• Small Business Hosting smallbusiness.officelive.comThis website would definitely be a rare find for people who wish to host a business website completely free of cost. The company offers web tools
that are useful for the online entrepreneur. These tools allow the user to track online sales, manage their documents and much more - all this at no cost whatsoever. The only downside that you would experience is that you would have to display advertisements on your website that could downplay the professional image of your website.• Nice Hosting Services sourceforge.netThere are companies out there that offer free hosting services for specific purposes. Sourceforge is a good hosting provider if you wish to host an open source softeare project.If you are looking for a host that could host a website on your family tree, then you may want to consider heraldry. communityarchitect.comYou may want to browse and research a bit more if you have not been able to zero down on the free hosting provider of your choice. A simple search engine search of "free ad free hosting" would generate a large number of results.