It is a jungle in the web hosting business world. There are thousands of web hosting companies competing for your business. Some are hobbyists running a server out of their basement and others are huge companies running thousands of servers. For the consumer it is not easy to determine which are good and which are not so good. It can often take some trial and error --- something that we would all like to avoid. So, here is the ultimate guide on the internet for choosing the right type of hosting and the right web hosting company the first time around.
It is important to choose the right type of hosting for your needs. The hosting types presented below represent a range of web hosting. We start with the least expensive with Free Hosting and move through Virtual Private Server Hosting and Dedicated Hosting to get to the most expensive which is Managed Hosting. In addition, depending on your needs, Co-located Hosting or Reseller Hosting might be what you need so those options are discussed as well.
1.1 Free Hosting
Free Hosting is free. Many times free hosting is provided free as long as your website provides advertisement space to the hosting company. This type of hosting is very limited as to the options, services and support that you can expect to receive when compared to any of the other paid hosting services. Free hosting is best for small, personal websites. However, with the cost of shared hosting being extremely low, it should be considered as well for personal websites.
1.2 Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting is the least expensive form of paid web hosting. As the name implies, with shared hosting, many web sites are hosted on a single physical server. This is generally the most economical option for paid hosting as many people share the overall cost of the server, server administration and maintenance. Shared hosting is a great option for sites that are simple and have a small amount of traffic. Conversely, if your site requires a specific database, customized programming and/or has a large amount of traffic, then shared hosting will not work well.
1.3 Virtual Private Server Hosting
Virtual private servers (VPS) are a form of virtualization that splits a single physical server into multiple virtual servers. As a type of web hosting, virtual private servers fills the gap between shared hosting and the next level of hosting which is dedicated hosting.
Virtual private servers allow root-level access to individual clients without requiring physically dedicated servers. They are most widely used by businesses and individuals that need a customized solution that cannot be filled in a shared hosting environment.
Virtual private servers have also become popular for their ability to establish production and test sites. For example, a single physical server might have two virtual private servers. One server will be running the production or live website, and a second which will be running a copy of the live site. This setup allows software updates to be fully tested prior to making the software changes on the live site without requiring several physical servers.
1.4 Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is a type of web hosting where you rent an entire server and the server is not shared with anyone else. This is more flexible than shared hosting and virtual private server hosting, as you have full control over the server, including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. This is an area that you will need to fully explore if you decide to use dedicated hosting as some hosting companies are limited in the administration services they provide and if you are not equipped to be an administrator, you could have problems.
1.5 Managed Hosting
Managed hosting is a type of dedicated hosting where you rent an entire server that is not shared with anyone and the hosting company manages the server for you. There are vast differences between how much management is provided between hosting companies. Some managed hosting companies do everything for you and they charge a high fee for this. Others do a minimal amount of work, like daily backups and applying security patches when you ask for them to be applied. Typically, though not always, the more you pay, the more you get. Here is a list of a variety of managed services. Some companies provide some of the services on this list others provide all services on this list.
24/7/365 Live, On-Site Technical Support
Systems Administration Services
Server Configuration Services
Server Provisioning Services
O/S Updates & Patches
Server Anti-Virus Protection
Server Load Balancing and Clustering Services
Ping Monitoring
Server Monitoring
Network Monitoring
System Utilization Monitoring
Process Monitoring
Network Based Intrusion Detection
On-Demand Vulnerability Assessments
Penetration Testing Service
O/S Hardening Services
Managed Firewall
Complete Support for all Hardware with spares on site
Managed Server Backup & Recovery
Weekly Tape Rotation and Secure, Off-Site Data Storage
Load/Stress Testing
Application Performance Analysis and Review
For really large sites, a custom cluster of servers may be required to handle extremely large amounts of traffic.
1.6 Co-located Hosting
Co-located hosting is where you put your own server(s) into a co-location center. A co-location center (also called a "colo") is a type of data center where you get access to a secure data center with access to one or more internet backbones, redundant HVAC, power and fire suppression systems to provide a higher level of security, performance and system uptime. The advantage is that you get access and full control over your server(s), but you do not have to invest in the entire infrastructure. Therefore, there is minimal cost and complexity.
Increasingly organizations are recognizing the benefits of co-locating their web hosting equipment within a data center. Co-location is becoming popular because of the time and cost savings a company can realize as result of using shared data center infrastructure. In addition, by outsourcing network traffic to a co-location service provider with greater bandwidth capacity, web site access speeds can improve significantly.
1.7 Reseller Hosting
Reseller hosting is a type of web hosting where the account owner splits up their allotted hard drive space and bandwidth to resell shared hosting. Resellers can split up a shared hosting account or can split up one or more dedicated servers. Often, resellers are web consultants, web designers or web developers who resell the shared hosting as an add-on service to complement their other services.
Resellers can receive 50 percent or more discount on the price of a reseller hosting account from the web hosting company. Resellers are also allowed to decide their own pricing structure and are able to sell web hosting plans under their own brand name.
Reseller hosting generally requires little knowledge of web hosting services in order to get started because resellers are generally not responsible for maintaining web server services or other maintenance related tasks. To the reseller's customers, the reseller is the web hosting company. However, in cases when technical problems occur, (for example, if the server goes down or the network connectivity to the server is down) the customer will call the owner of the dedicated server in which the reseller host is hosted for technical support.
Through control panels (see list below), reseller hosting is made simple and straight forward. Typically reseller programs offer one or more of the popular control panels.
Popular Control Panels List:
DirectAdmin (Unix)
Ensim Pro (Windows/Unix)
Helm (Windows)
Hosting Controller (Windows)
H-Sphere (Windows/Unix)
Plesk (Windows/Unix)
Webmin (Unix)
WHM/cPanel (Windows/Unix)
2 Choosing a Web Host
So, now that you have determined the right type of hosting, it is time to look at the various items to be considered when choosing a web host. While there are many items to be considered, the relative importance of each compared to another really depends on your business. If you are running an internet ecommerce business that must be online 24/7, then reliability, network redundancy and expert support will be weighted more highly in your decision than cost. However, if you need a simple 10 page static HTML website, then cost might be one of the more important criteria in your search. We have subdivided the information in choosing a web host into the following sections:
Cost – How much do you want to spend?
Features and Options – What features and options do you need?
Services Provided – What services do you need?
Hosting Company Criteria – What hosting company requirements do you have?
Due Diligence – Use independent sources to provide feedback on various hosting companies before you make a final decision.
3 Cost
How much should you pay for web hosting services? Well, the answer to this question really depends on what you are going to be hosting. If you are hosting a personal blog site, then you might be just fine to find a shared hosting plan for less than $5 a month. However, if you are hosting an online business site that handles credit card transactions and receives a lot of traffic, then you might need a server that is managed for you. This might cost you $500 to $1,000 a month or more. This sounds expensive, but, if your business relies on your hosting provider, then you need one that provides exceptional service, has backup power systems, multiple internet backbones, fire suppression systems, data backup services and knows how to deliver exceptional uptime. Another way to look at this is how much would it cost you in business for each hour your web site was down?
Typically, most hosting companies are very competitive with price versus features and services. As with most purchases and prices you often get what you pay for; however, when looking at very expensive hosting plans, you may be able to find equally capable hosting companies and plans with a significant price difference. That is, the most expensive hosting companies may not necessarily be the best.
Most web hosting companies allow you to save money by paying quarterly or annually instead of monthly. A good approach is to start out paying monthly. This approach allows you to quickly change hosting companies if the host doesn’t meet your needs. After a few months if you are satisfied with their features and services, then you can change to a quarterly or annual payment to save money.
4 Features and Options
4.1 Operating System
Web hosting companies provide plans and servers that run various operating systems. The most common are Linux and Windows, although you can also find UNIX, Solaris and Mac OS X operating systems too.
The operating system you select is important because it determines which web servers, databases and programming languages you can use. For example, if you want to develop your website using ASP or ASP.NET, then you will need a Windows operating system. If you want to use Microsoft Access, or Microsoft SQL Server databases, then you will need a Windows operating system. If you want to use the Microsoft web server, you will need a Windows operating system.
If you do not need a Windows operating system, then you can use a Unix or Linux operating system. Unix and Linux hosting plans are often less expensive than those running Windows. Linux has risen to prominence as an operating system for servers; eight of the ten most reliable internet hosting companies now run Linux on their web servers (Source: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/10/07/rackspace_most_reliable_hoster_in_september.html ).
Since there are a few different versions of Windows that are used for hosting and many different companies supplying different versions of Unix and Linux, it is helpful to choose an operating system with which you and your web site developer are experienced and comfortable.
4.2 Bandwidth / Data Transfer
In website hosting, bandwidth or data transfer is the amount of information downloadable from the web server over a prescribed period of time. Web hosting companies often quote a monthly bandwidth limit for a website, for example 100 GB/month. If visitors to the website download a total greater than 100 GB in one month, the bandwidth limit will have been exceeded. When the monthly bandwidth is exceeded, then additional bandwidth charges are incurred. These additional charges can be very expensive, so it is best to choose a plan or contract with enough bandwidth so that these charges are not incurred. Web hosting companies should allow you to increase your bandwidth if you outgrow the plan that you start with. E-mail and ftp traffic are often considered part of the monthly bandwidth. If you have a dedicated server that is managed with backups and operating system patches applied by the hosting company, those services and associated data transfers should not be counted against your monthly bandwidth. Internet connection rate terms such as 56K, broadband, etc. are also bandwidth, but are measured per second.
Since your site traffic will hopefully grow over time, you will need to check out the hosting company’s policy and costs when bandwidth is exceeded. They should publish an overage charge per Gigabyte.
Be wary of web hosting companies that tout "unlimited bandwidth". The hosting company has to pay for the bandwidth, so they have to be able to cover their costs and no hosting company has “unlimited bandwidth” to provide anyway. Therefore, you need to look at the fine print about how much bandwidth the hosting plan allows. Otherwise, you might be quite upset when you get an expensive web hosting bill for exceeding the "unlimited bandwidth". The companies touting “unlimited bandwidth” will have some sort of “fair use policy” or “acceptable usage policy” that somehow defines “unlimited bandwidth” to be limited in some way. You may not find these policies on their website, but you should ask for them and read them carefully. Here is one redacted unlimited bandwidth excerpt from a hosting company site:
Unlimited Bandwidth
Guaranteed, unrestricted, dedicated access to the [hosting company] network with no excess charges.
As part of the [hosting company] group, we have the infrastructure and economies of scale to offer you a dedicated server with unrestricted monthly data transfer limits and no excess charges.
We really want unlimited to mean unlimited for everyone, but to prevent those annoying few from spoiling the party an acceptable usage policy applies.
Unlimited bandwidth is not the same as un-metered or non-metered bandwidth, but they are sometimes misused with one substituted for the other. Un-metered bandwidth does not mean unlimited bandwidth. Un-metered means you can use as much un-metered bandwidth/transfer as needed without ever worrying about bandwidth overages or extra charges. The maximum amount of transfer is limited only by the connection you are signed up for. As an example, a 1.5Mbps Un-metered Connection at full capacity is capable of transferring about 760 GB of data in a month.
Some web hosting companies allow you to choose the manner in which you want to be billed for bandwidth if you are using a dedicated server or co-located server. There are essentially two different options.
Burstable Metered Bandwidth allows you to burst up to the hosting company’s full network capacity for peak performance when you need it, and you pay based on the average amount of data you transfer. Most hosting companies bill on the 95th percentile of your usage (giving you the highest peaks in your bandwidth for free). Here is how one company calculates the 95th Percentile Value:
We sample your actual usage every 5 minutes, we then average the total and post the result as a 5 minute usage point on your usage graph. Over the month, we will continue to plot the 5 minute averages, which total about 8,640 points plotted on the graph. We then take the top 5 percent of your usage (432 points) and throw it out! Your usage is determined based upon the highest remaining usage plotted. If your usage is at or lower than your committed bandwidth AFTER we've taken off the top 5%, you will not receive any additional billing. Any usage over the minimum will be billed at the appropriate rate.
Fixed Non-Metered Bandwidth allows you to specify the maximum amount of bandwidth you want available to your servers, and fixes your rate each month so you know exactly what your costs will be.
4.3 Disk Space
Since “disk space is cheap,” getting ample disk space should not be an issue with any hosting plan or dedicated server unless your site has a lot of multimedia or graphics files or very large forums. Currently, you can find $4.99 a month plans with 100 GB of disk space. This is more than enough space for most websites. What is important is to know the space you need prior to signing up for web hosting, so that you buy the right plan. If you are going for a really cheap plan and disk space might be an issue, then find out if email, log files, etc. also count against the disk space allotment of a shared hosting plan or VPS plan.
4.4 Databases
Many websites require one or more databases to store the information to be shown on the website as well as to store information users enter on the website. Which database(s) you need will depend on the development languages used for your website, the operating system used and in some cases personal preference. If the web hosting company is setting up the database, then it must be one that they support and are familiar with. So, prior to choosing a web host, you need to decide which database or databases will work for you. If you are using a web development company, they can assist you with this process and should be consulted to make sure that the database you choose is one they are experienced with and can support. Here is a list of popular database options.
MySQL
MS SQL
MS Access
Oracle
PostgreSQL
Etc.
4.5 Control Panel
Almost all hosting plans come with some type of control panel, enabling you to configure your hosting and website settings without having to learn the entire operating system that powers the site. The control panel is accessed through a secure webpage on your web browser. Some of the commonly available modules in most control panels:
Visitor statistics using web log analysis software
Details of available and used disk space and bandwidth
Web-based file manager
E-mail account configuration
Database management
FTP users account configuration
Server log access
Below is a list of the most popular control panels that web hosting companies use and provide with their hosting plans and the operating systems they work with.
Popular Control Panels List:
DirectAdmin (Unix)
Ensim Pro (Windows/Unix)
Helm (Windows)
Hosting Controller (Windows)
H-Sphere (Windows/Unix)
Plesk (Windows/Unix)
Webmin (Unix)
WHM/cPanel (Windows/Unix)
4.6 CGI Support
CGI is an acronym for the Common Gateway Interface which is a standard protocol for interfacing external application software with an information server, commonly a web server. This allows the server to pass requests from a client web browser to the external application. The web server can then return the output from the application to the web browser.
The way CGI works from the Web server's point of view is that certain locations (e.g. http://www.example.com/maillist.cgi) are defined to be served by a CGI program. Whenever a request to a matching URL is received, the corresponding program is called, with any data that the client sent as input. Output from the program is collected by the Web server, augmented with appropriate headers, and sent back to the client.
CGI and Security
While almost all hosting plans provide CGI support, in many cases there are some limits. All hosting companies are concerned about security on their network and servers. Since the CGI protocol allows remote, unprivileged users to execute programs on a machine they do not own, hosting companies often put limits on CGI programs. The hosting companies also reserve the right to inspect and disable any program that presents security or performance risks. Here are some of the reasons for these concerns and some example limits.
Poorly-written CGI programs can allow access to the system password file and other sensitive system and data files that may enable a malicious user to launch an attack against the system. CGI programs are also capable of consuming large amounts of system resources (CPU, memory and disk space). For these reasons, hosting companies take CGI security very seriously. In the context of providing Internet and hosting services to a number of independent users, the term "security" includes:
Providing access to system resources to authorized users only, where "system resources" are defined as network bandwidth, CPU cycles, memory, disk space and software
Providing uninterrupted access to system resources
Ensuring that all authorized users have equal access to system resources
Ensuring that authorized users do not interfere with one another or inhibit other authorized users from accessing system resources
Ensuring that authorized users do not interfere with the operation of other Internet hosts or users (also known as "denial of service" attacks)
Ensuring that authorized users do not violate the system's Acceptable Use Policy
Hosting companies require that the CGI scripts you install respect system security, system performance, and the property of other users on the system. Therefore, they will disable or remove any software, CGI or otherwise, that threatens system security, consumes an unusual amount of system resources, interferes with another customer's service, or violates their Acceptable Use Policy. The hosting companies may also revoke your CGI privileges if deemed necessary.
Here are examples of the limits that are placed on CGI scripts:
CPU TIME = 10 Seconds - This is the amount of CPU time one CGI program can use at a given time.
MAXIMUM FILESIZE = 100 KBytes - This is the maximum size that one CGI script can reach
MAXIMUM STACK SIZE = 8 MBytes - This is the amount of stack memory that can be used by any CGI program.
MAXIMUM NUMBER OF PROCESSES = 32 Processes - This is the number of processes that can be created by the CGI program at a given time.
MAXIMUM NUMBER OF OPEN FILES = 32 Open Files - This is the number of files that can be opened by the CGI program at a given time.
MAXIMUM NUMBER OF OPEN CONNECTIONS TO MYSQL = 20
4.7 Perl
Practical Extraction and Report Language (Perl) is a programming language designed for processing text, making it one of the most popular languages for writing CGI scripts. Perl is an interpretive language, which makes it easy to build and test simple programs. Perl borrows features from a variety of other languages including C, shell scripting (sh), AWK, sed and Lisp.
4.8 PHP
PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is an open source programming language designed for producing dynamic Web pages. PHP code is executed on the web server. PHP code can be embedded within HTML code. In an HTML document, the PHP script is enclosed within special PHP tags, which allow the author to jump between HTML and PHP instead of having to rely on heavy amounts of code to output HTML. PHP's strength lies in its compatibility with many types of databases.
Many PHP web site features are available as free or inexpensive code, many of which are open source allowing you to customize it to your needs. You can find these scripts at script directories like www.supersourcecode.com.
4.9 ASP
Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's server-side technology for dynamically-generated web pages that is marketed as an add-on to Internet Information Services (IIS).
Programming ASP websites is made easier by various built-in objects. Each object corresponds to a group of frequently-used functionality useful for creating dynamic web pages. In ASP 2.0 there are six such built-in objects: Application, ASPError, Request, Response, Server, and Session. Session, for example, is a cookie-based session object that maintains variables from page to page. Application Center Test is also available for load testing. To use ASP, you must host on servers running Windows operating systems.
4.10 Domain Names
Domain Names
A domain name is a unique tag that provides a more memorable name to stand in for the associated numeric IP address of the web site. For example, the www.webhostingusers.com IP address is 66.111.108.206. So, you could type that number into your web browser’s address bar, or simply type “www.webhostingusers.com”. Either entry will take you to our website.
Domain names allow for any web site to move to a different location in the topology of the Internet (or an intranet), which would then have a different IP address. For example, if you moved your web site from one host to another, the IP address of your web site would change, but your domain name would not.
Your domain name acts as your calling card on the web since you can choose a name that represents your business, your family name, or anything else that can be remembered easily.
Independent Domain Names
Nowadays there should be no issue with getting your own independent domain name to use with your hosting plan. In the past, some hosting companies would give you a domain name off of their domain name, so your domain name would be something like www.hostcompany.com/yourwebsitename. Today most hosting companies include one or more domain name registrations with your hosting plan. While that is a nice feature to have, we recommend that you use a company that specializes in domain name registration instead of using any domain names from your hosting company regardless of whether they were included in your plan or not. This way, if you want to change hosting companies, you have control over transferring your domain name to another hosting company. You might have issues transferring your domain name from the company that included it as part of your hosting plan.
4.11 E-mail Accounts and Features
E-mail Accounts
There are two main ways that users can access their e-mail messages from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) is the standard way which has been around for years. It is very similar regular mail. Messages are delivered to your computer, put in your mailbox, and are then your responsibility.
The newer method is IMAP (Interactive Mail Access Protocol). With IMAP, e-mail is delivered to the server, and you connect to the server to see your e-mail. The e-mail is not stored on your machine. When a message is marked as read, it is marked as read on the server, not on your computer. iMAP lets you access your e-mail from different programs, different computers, or even via a web page and your e-mail will always reflect all your changes.
Advantages of POP3
E-mail is available when you are offline
E-mail is not stored on the server, so your disk usage on the server is less
Just about any e-mail client (software) supports POP3
Advantages of IMAP
E-mail is available from any machine you use
E-mail is stored on the server, so your e-mail cannot be deleted/destroyed if your computer should happen to crash, be stolen or destroyed
You can access IMAP e-mail via the web, without even needing an e-mail client installed. This means you can check your e-mail from someone else's machine or even a public terminal and not have to worry about the security of your passwords.
Some IMAP clients can set up rules for "server side" filtering. This means that you could put all the e-mails from current customers into one mailbox, and filter other e-mail (potential new customers) to another mailbox. This can be done automatically by the server instead of setting up manual filters in whatever software you happen to have.
Disadvantages of POP3
Can be much slower to check e-mail
Much harder to do server-side filtering
E-mail is inaccessible from other machines
Disadvantages of IMAP
E-mail is not usually available if you are offline
When choosing a web hosting plan, make sure that the e-mail accounts are compatible with the protocol and e-mail client that you wish to use.
E-mail Alias and E-mail Forwarding
E-mail Alias
An e-mail alias is not a real e-mail account. Instead it's an address that forwards all e-mail it receives to another e-mail account. For example, if you setup an e-mail alias called
to go to
, then all e-mail sent to
will be automatically forwarded to
. In this case, 'info' is called an alias of 'johndoe'.
You can setup e-mail alias so that e-mail is forwarded to an account outside of your domain name as well. For example, you can setup
to go to
. You can also setup e-mail alias to forward to multiple usernames or another alias. If an alias is set up the same name as a username, the alias will override the username.
Using e-mail alias is a way you can have unlimited e-mail addresses to meet your needs with only a few actual e-mail accounts.
E-mail Forwarding
E-mail forwarding is the mechanism whereby e-mail sent to one e-mail address (the forwarding address) is automatically forwarded by the associated mail server to another e-mail address (the destination address).
There are two implementations of e-mail forwarding. One version does not store a copy of the e-mail message (also called an e-mail alias), the other version does.
Individuals use e-mail forwarding for different reasons and to meet their own particular needs. Here are a few examples of how and why e-mail forwarding is used:
You may use a permanent e-mail forwarding address to allow you to change e-mail/webmail service providers at will. By using a permanent forwarding address you avoid the need to inform your contacts of a change in address should you choose to change service providers.
You may set up e-mail forwarding on your primary webmail service and forward copies of your received e-mail to your secondary webmail service. This allows you to have two copies of all received e-mails. This acts as a form of back-up in the event that there is a problem accessing your primary webmail account. In this case, you need to monitor storage space on both e-mail accounts and manage them accordingly.
Most web hosting plans provide e-mail alias and e-mail forwarding features. If these are features you want, make sure the hosting companies you are considering do provide them.
Email Catch-all
With an e-mail catch-all function enabled, incoming e-mails with misspelled or incorrect names will go to an e-mail account you select rather than being returned as undeliverable. This way, e-mails to you will always be delivered, even if they have a typo or the wrong address!
Most web hosting plans provide catch-all accounts. When choosing a web hosting plan, make sure that the hosting companies you are considering supply this basic feature.
E-mail Auto-responders
An e-mail auto-responder is a feature that allows you to automatically generate customized responses whenever a specific e-mail address receives a message. If you are on vacation, unavailable, or just want to let your customers know that you have received their e-mail, you can set up an auto-responder for this purpose.
You can set up an individual responder for each e-mail address with an appropriate message. Some auto-responders have a limit of the number of characters for the response message.
Spam and E-mail Virus Filters
Most hosting companies provide Spam and E-mail Virus Filters for the removal of spam and computer viruses. These filters are run when the e-mail is received before it is delivered to the user. These filters augment those on your e-mail client program.
Bulk E-mail / Mailing List Features
Many web hosting plans provide tools for you to setup and maintain a mailing list of customers or friends so you can easily send e-mails or newsletters to your list. The features and limitations of these programs vary widely, so if you are interested in having these tools setup automatically for your website by your web hosting company, then look for web hosting companies that have what you need. Alternatively, there are many free and inexpensive mail list scripts and programs that are available as well.
Webmail
Webmail is a Web application that allows users to access their e-mail through a Web browser, as an alternative to using an e-mail client such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird or Eudora. Many web hosting companies offer Webmail for their customers. This feature allows you to access your e-mail from any internet connected computer.
4.12 Server Side Includes (SSI)
Server Side Includes or SSI is an easy server-side scripting language used for the web. Its primary use is for including the contents of a file into another, via a Web Server.
SSI is primarily used to copy the contents of one or more files into another. For example, a file (of any type, .htm, .txt, etc.) containing a daily message, could be included into multiple SSI Enabled pages throughout a website, by placing a simple include line referencing a message.txt file into the desired pages. With one change of the message.txt file, pages including the file will display the latest daily message. Server Side Includes are useful for including a common piece of code throughout a site, such as a navigation menu.
If your web pages use SSI, then you need to make sure that the web hosting plan you purchase provides support for SSI.
4.13 FrontPage Server Extensions
Microsoft FrontPage is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site administration tool from Microsoft for the Windows operating system.
FrontPage Server Extensions are server-side scripts that extend the functionality of FrontPage. These extensions support features such as hit counters, data collection, e-mail processing, and database processing. Here is a list of features that require FrontPage Server Extensions:
Date / Time
Comment
Photo Gallery
Substitution
Include
Themes
External Web
Navigation
Page Banner
Link Bar, Custom
Link Bar, Back / Next
Top 10 Lists
Save Form Results (E-mail, File)
Reports
Search Form and Table of Contents options for various template wizards
User Registration template
Database Results
Save Results to Database
Search Current Web
Hit Counter
Include Page Based on Schedule
Include Picture Based on Schedule
Table of Contents
Visual InterDev Navigation Bar
Table of Contents template
Lists
Document libraries
Discussion
Survey
Modify rules for document libraries
Rules customization in the Document Libraries Wizard
Data Source Catalog task pane
Data View Details task pane
Data View Conditional Formatting
Web Part Gallery task pane
Data Source Catalog
Web Packages
Export & Import Web Packages
Customize data views
Data Source Details view
Data View Web Part
Data View styles
Web Parts pages and zones
Remote Web Site view
Connect to remote sites
Publish to FTP and DAV servers
To use features that require FrontPage Server Extensions, you need to make sure that the hosting company and hosting plan that you select supports FrontPage Server Extensions.
4.14 FTP
FTP or file transfer protocol is a commonly used protocol for exchanging files over any network that supports the TCP/IP protocol (such as the Internet or an intranet). There are two computers involved in an FTP transfer: a server and a client. The FTP server, running FTP server software, listens on the network for connection requests from other computers. The client computer, running FTP client software, initiates a connection to the server. Once connected, the client can do a number of file manipulation operations such as uploading files to the server, downloading files from the server, renaming or deleting files on the server and so on. Virtually every computer platform supports the FTP protocol. This allows any computer connected to a TCP/IP based network to manipulate files on another computer on that network regardless of which operating systems are involved (if the computers permit FTP access). There are many existing FTP client and server programs, and many of these are free.
Anonymous FTP
Many sites that run FTP servers enable what is called "anonymous ftp". With anonymous ftp, users do not need an account on the server. The user name for anonymous access is typically 'anonymous' or 'ftp'. This account does not need a password. Although users are commonly asked to send their email addresses as their passwords for authentication, usually there is trivial or no verification depending on the FTP server and its configuration.
4.15 Web Analytics
Web analytics is the measurement of the behavior of visitors to a website. For businesses, it is important to measure which aspects of the website work towards the business objectives; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase. Many different vendors provide web analytics software and services.
Many hosting companies provide web analytics by providing web log analysis software that as its name implies, analyzes the log files of your web server.
Web log analysis software parses the log file from a web server (like Apache), and based on the values contained in the log file, derives indicators about who, when and how a web server is visited.
Here are the indicators reported by most of web log analysis software:
Number of visits and number of unique visitors
Visits duration and last visits
Authenticated users, and last authenticated visits
Days of week and rush hours
Domains/countries of host's visitors
Hosts list
Most viewed, entry and exit pages
Files type
OS used
Browsers used
Robots
Search engines, keyphrases and keywords used to find the analyzed web site
HTTP errors
Here is a list of popular web log analysis software:
Affinium NetInsight
Analog
AWFFull
AWStats
SmarterStats
Unica NetTracker
Urchin
Visitors
WebAbacus
Webalizer
WebTrends
W3Perl
4.16 Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a cryptographic protocol which provides secure communications on the Internet for such things as web browsing, e-mail, Internet faxing, and other data transfers. The protocol allows client/server applications to communicate in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. If you plan to process credit cards or similar secure transactions over the internet, then you will need a web hosting plan that supports SSL.
4.17 Shopping Cart / E-commerce Features
Shopping cart or e-commerce features are software used to assist people making purchases online. Similar to an actual retail store shopping cart, the software allows online shopping customers to "place" items in the cart. Upon "checkout" the software calculates a total for the order including shipping and handling and taxes, if applicable.
Make sure the web hosting plan / server, database, operating system and supported script languages can run the shopping cart you want to use if you do not want to use one provided by the host.
5 Services Provided
5.1 Technical Support
One of the biggest reasons why people change web hosting companies is because of poor or less than adequate technical support. Some hosting companies save money by only providing support through web chat or e-mail and they pass the savings on to the customer. So, you might get adequate support through web chat or e-mail. However, you should expect to pay more for phone support and even more for toll-free phone support. So, as you can see there are four main ways to access web hosting support: e-mail, web chat, phone and toll-free phone. You should determine which support methods will work best for you and look at hosting companies that provide those.
Also important for support are the hours of operation that are provided. Since, your web site is up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you should expect nothing less than support services that are accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
With the popularity of outsourcing and off-shoring, it is common for support to be delivered by companies other than the hosting company and from countries other than the one in which you live. In some cases, language barriers can be an issue for support, so you should ask where the web hosting company’s support centers are located.
You will pay more for better service. If your business or income depends on reliability and quick service, expect to pay more and with good reason.
5.2 Security and Professional Services
Some web hosting companies provide various security and professional services. Here are some of the services you might be interested, especially if you are looking for dedicated or managed hosting.
Ping Monitoring
Operating System Updates and Patches
Operating System Hardening Services
Service Monitoring
System Monitoring
Process Monitoring
Server Applications Support
On-demand Vulnerability Assessments
Intrusion Testing Service
Intrusion Detection
Professional Services Engineers
Systems Administrative Services
Database Administrative Services
Server Hardware Replacement Services
Server Upgrade Services
Server Load Balancing
Server Clustering
5.3 Backup Services
We all know that despite the best-laid plans, accidents or mishaps happen, so it is always a good idea to be prepared, especially for a loss of data. A great way to look at data backups is with the following question: How many days of work or website updates are you willing to lose? That question puts into perspective the importance of web site backups.
Data loss can result from a number of things, including hard drive failures, inadvertent deletion, web site programming errors, your web host going out of business or even natural disasters such as fires, hurricanes, floods or earthquakes. Therefore, it is important for you to make sure that your web host has appropriate data backup methods in place and off-site storage of backup data, but also a system for restoring them. A system for restoring data is important in any emergency circumstance, but especially important if your web site has been deleted or in the event you want or need to migration to a different server.
There are different ways that web hosting companies protect web sites from data loss:
Regular Onsite Backups - in which your files are saved to a separate storage device on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
This can be done several ways:
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) - involves the configuration of hard disk drives to work together to increase performance and/or fault tolerance. It protects against data loss due to hard drive failure by using one of two techniques - mirroring and parity.
CD Backups - involves the compression and burning of data onto a CD.
Network Backups - involves the maintenance of a centralized backup system that allows your data to be dumped to a storage array directly through the network and is a convenient and seamless way to store your data without consuming your own disk space or unnecessarily consuming media.
Backup/Redundant Disk Drive (for dedicated servers) - each physical server could have a hard disk backup that runs every 24-hours; provides enhanced data protection when used in addition to a RAID Array: A disk drive may be placed on a controller separate from the RAID Array, and in the event of RAID controller failure, data restoration can be performed by accessing the backup disk drive. This process can be automated using automated scripts.
Tape Backups - involves the use of data tapes to store your information; some factors to consider when putting together a tape drive configuration:
Amount of data to backup
Length of time to keep saved data before overwriting it
Type of backup to perform (incremental, differential, full copy, etc.)
Frequency of backup (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)
Off Site Backups: involves the duplication, compressed and transmission of your data to a remote location on a regular basis; work like regular tape backups but instead of sending backup data to a tape drive, the file is encrypted and sent over the Internet to data centers for immediate and safe storage away from your server's location.
Reasons for doing offsite backups (even if you already have a tape backup system) include:
Time savings - tapes are slow and sequential, which make it difficult to find files quickly
Increased productivity - due to disk drives' better read / write efficiency
Lower cost - eliminates the need for expensive backup equipment (since you only need an Internet connection), as well as for in-house administrators, since the process is fully automated.
Multiple Daily Backups: multiple daily backups or hourly backups can be done and your site placed on its own dedicated web server with continual redundant backup systems and data integrity checks.
In addition to multiple backup systems provided by your host, you should also maintain your own up-to-date copy of critical data for your own purposes at all times.
At a minimum, your hosting company should provide daily web site backups and provide for off-site storage on at least a monthly basis, but we suggest that be done on a weekly basis.
6 Hosting Company Criteria
6.1 Data Centers
For reliability and security it is important that web hosting companies have a well designed data center. Some smaller web hosting vendors may not have a robust data center which could lead to reliability and/or security issues. It is important for web hosting companies to have or use good data centers. The data center used should be fully redundant in terms of power and connectivity. They should also provide excellent security. Here are a few questions to ask:
Do you have your own data center?
How many internet backbone connections do you have coming into the facility?
What is the average utilization of your internet backbone connections? (No matter how large the connection, if it is running at maximum capacity it will be slow.)
Do you have redundant power to the servers?
Do you have one or more backup power generators on-site?
How often do you test your generator?
What sort of security measures do you have in place for the network?
What physical security do you have?
What type of fire suppression systems do you have in place?
6.2 Internet Backbone Connections
Web hosting companies should have a fast connection to the Internet that is capable of transporting large amounts of data every second but also redundant and diverse paths to the Internet backbone to insure reliability.
Therefore, it is important to know how many internet backbone connections your web hosting company has and to know the speed and utilization of those connections.
You will want your website to be available and reliable and multiple internet backbone connections that are not at their full capacity will help provide just that. So, make sure you know what the web hosting companies you are considering have before signing up with them.
6.3 Reliability
There are many factors to consider with respect to reliability. When most webmasters think of reliability of their web host, they think in terms of uptime. Uptime is the percentage of time that your website is up and running on the internet and should be as close to 100% as possible.
To have a high uptime, the web hosting company must have a very reliable internet backbone connection, reliable power to your server, great server administration capabilities and redundant network and server hardware. For example, many servers have redundant CPUs, power supplies and disk drives to allow the server to keep working even with a hardware failure.
The web hosting company that you choose should guarantee its uptime to be at least 99.9% uptime. Even with 99.9% uptime, your site could be down up to 525.6 minutes (or 8.76 hours) per year. The web hosting company should provide a pro-rated refund if less than their guaranteed uptime is delivered. You should be aware that the host may require much documentation from you to generate an uptime refund unless it is a major internet backbone or power problem that affects all their customers.
For many web hosting companies, you can check their uptime if they are being monitored by Netcraft. Go to www.netcraft.com and run an uptime check on the main URL of the hosting company. You can see this by filling in the webserver search box under the What's that site running?... label and click the Search button, then on the information page for the web host, click the uptime graph icon .
6.4 Business Stability
When looking for a web hosting provider, it is important to know long the company has been in business and how many employees they have. Here are some additional questions to ask which will give you a sense of their ability to stay in business:
Are they profitable?
You probably won’t be able to determine this unless they are a public company, but there are many good private web hosting companies that provide some sort of revenue / profitability / cash flow positive / growth press releases that should give you some sense of their financial stability.
Has there been a turnover in management or ownership lately?
You may not be able to learn much from private companies either, but often new leadership or ownership will be reflected in company press releases.
6.5 Money Back Guarantee
Does the hosting company offer a money back guarantee? If so, how long is that guarantee good for? Many hosting companies offer a free 30-day money back guarantee. This is a nice feature that allows you some time to either setup your website or do a test transfer of your website and make sure it will all work well. If there are any incompatibility issues with scripting language versions, database versions, operating system settings, web server settings, etc. this gives you and the hosting company some time to try to work through these issues without putting your money at risk.
6.6 Number of Websites and Traffic on a Shared Hosting Server
For Shared Hosting, find out how many websites and how much website traffic is supported by each server and what type of server is used. Often, too many websites are hosted on a single server, or the traffic to those websites grows to where performance is inadequate. Sometimes the best way to judge this is to test other sites hosted by the same company and to talk to their customers to find out how they rate the speed of their sites.
6.7 Blackholed, Blacklisted or Blocked IP Addresses
You should ask the hosting companies you are considering if their network has blackholed (also called blacklisted or blocked) IP addresses. Some hosts do not care about what their customers are doing on their networks, as long as they pay their bill. Because of this, some hosting companies either intentionally or inadvertently allow customers to create issues by getting their network blackholed for spamming, for example.
Getting blackholed means that other networks will refuse e-mail originated from IP addresses that are blacklisted. Some hosting companies have a number of entire class C networks (up to 256 IP addresses) blackholed. These blacklisted IPs are then redistributed to new customers. The problem with this practice is that your website e-mails may not reach your customers because your IP address is blacklisted due to the activities of the previous user of that IP address.
Check with any web hosting companies you are considering to see if their networks are blackholed. Also, you can do some checking on your own with this link to a website that tracks blackholed networks and blacklisted IPs and lists them: www.spamhaus.org/sbl/isp.lasso.
If you are given an IP address that is blacklisted, you should contact your hosting company and request a new IP address that is not blacklisted.
6.8 Server Location
If you have a website that is primarily for a specific geographic region, you may want to locate a hosting company in that region so that the speed of serving your web pages is faster. For example, you may be in the United States, but have a web site primarily for the Australian market. Therefore, you may want to host your site in an Australian data center. Since the distance is shorter between the server and your primary visitors who are also in Australia, then the speed will be better. For example, you might find that a 30ms "ping" is achievable from a browser in Australia to the server in Australia on a good connection, whereas 230ms may be what is achievable from Australia to the United States.
6.9 Web Hosting Contract Issues
Web hosting companies will require a web hosting contract or agreement to be signed. The key provisions in these agreements include:
Scope of Services. The specific services provided by the hosting company should be precisely identified.
Updates and Modifications. The mechanism and obligations of the hosting company for updates and modifications to the site should be detailed.
Performance. The agreement should address various performance issues, including minimum performance criteria, uptime, server response time, problem response time, technical assistance, and remedies for system failure.
Termination and Transfer. The Web site owner should have relative flexibility to terminate the agreement for any reason. Upon termination, the hosting company should be obligated to use reasonable efforts to transfer the site to another hosting company.
Warranties. The Web site owner will want a number of warranties from the hosting company, primarily dealing with performance and the technology provided by the hosting company.
Liability. The liability for breach by the hosting company should be addressed, although many providers attempt to limit their liability to the amount of fees paid to the provider under the agreement.
Before you sign any web hosting contracts or agreements, you should review it carefully and make sure there are no issues that you might not want to agree to. For example:
Are you free to choose a new host at any time?
Who is the administrative contact on your domain and who can transfer the domain?
Is there the possibility for any hidden charges?
How does the uptime guarantee work?
How does the money back guarantee work?
What is their technical support service level agreement?
7 Due Diligence
After you do all of the research to find a few web hosting companies to consider, you also need to do some due diligence to find out a little more about each company to help you make your decision.
You should definitely find out what current and former customers have to say about the hosting company. Can the host provide you with success stories for clients with similar configurations to yours? Are they able to provide references from clients who can tell you about their experience using that company? Don’t just rely on their references, but also seek out other customers that they don’t give you. You can also ask on various webmaster forums, including the forums at www.webhostingusers.com. When you get feedback via any webmaster forum you use, make sure you get the person’s website domain name and check it out with whois to make sure it is hosted by the hosting company. Here is one whois site you can use: http://www.domaintools.com. This check is important to make sure that you are not getting great reviews from people who work for the hosting company or very negative reviews from the hosting company’s competitors. You can also go to www.webhostingusers.com to find customer reviews and ratings of the web hosting companies that they use and to rate the web hosting company that you use.
You can also try to find out the speed of the hosting company’s servers and network is good or if they put too many sites on one server. You can ask the host for a list of sites that they have on Shared or VPS Hosting plans if that is what you are interested in. Then, access some of those sites that are similar in type and size as you site during different times of the day to see how fast their web pages load. You can also send e-mail to the webmasters of those sites to get their feedback on the hosting company. If you can’t find an appropriate e-mail address or Contact Us form to submit, you can try common e-mail addresses like and .
Also, check out how easy it is to contact them during peak hours? Call their support line at various times during the day while you are evaluating them and see how long it takes to get through. Note that you might be handled by a call taker that logs a ticket for an administrator to work on. This is a good setup as the administrators are most often busy doing complicated, multi-step processes and it makes sense to not have them interrupted by support calls.
However, there are times when you will need to talk to a systems administrator who can resolve your issues. Find out the structure of their support department and how quickly you can get to an actual systems administrator when you need to.
Copyright 2006-2007 by Ingenuity Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
You can find more articles, tutorials and tips like this on web hosting from http://www.webhostingusers.com. You can also find articles, tutorials and tips on open source, web site programming and scripts for your website at http://www.supersourcecode.com.
How to Choose a Host
