Archive for July, 2010

If you’re going to sign up with a web hosting service, you’ll obviously want to sign up with the best one you can find. After all, it’ll be difficult to build your entire website and advertise its domain name to your customers, only to have to change it and start all over again at some point. Below are some tips that should help you when it comes to how to choose the best web hosting service.

There are so many web hosts out there it can be difficult to know where to begin. First, decide what type of web hosting service you want to work with. Dedicated servers are very expensive, but ideal if you’re going to need a ton of bandwidth and web space for your site. Shared hosts are the cheapest but can be slower and a little more restricted. Virtual private servers are somewhere in between when it comes to price, speed and space. When you’ve decided what kind of server you want, look for companies that advertise an uptime of ninety-nine percent or higher (meaning the server works—and thus people can access your site—at least ninety-nine times out of a hundred). Try logging onto sites hosted by that company. Are they fast or slow? Make sure you can add shopping carts to your site if you’ll need them. Try to work with a hosting company that will offer you a control panel. And when you work on your site, you should have at least several options when it comes to the scripts you can use. Finally, try to estimate how many gigabytes of bandwidth your site will use each month—consult a computer expert if you need help with this calculation. Then make sure that whatever company you sign up with will allow you at least that much bandwidth each month. If not, you’ll be charged for however much you go over your allowed bandwidth, and even if your web hosting company offers cheaper rates, it still won’t be worth these additional charges. (Of course, chances are strong that if you’re running a small business you won’t need too much bandwidth anyway, but it’s good to be sure.)

Finally, when you’ve narrowed your list of potential web hosting services to a few that meet all of your needs and desires, you should compare their prices and choose the one that will offer you the most value for your money (meaning, the cheapest). You might be tempted to go with a free website, which is fine if you’re just setting up a family page, but a bad idea if you’re making it your business site. You won’t have many options or much control over your site for one thing, and many customers probably won’t take seriously a business with a free web page. It’d be kind of like making your own billboard out of construction paper.

Ten or fifteen years ago, people might surf the Internet for an hour or so in search of a little information and entertainment.  Now, people live a good part of their lives there.  Businesses rise and fall, romances blossom and crumble, friendships are made and dreams are fulfilled, and people go to college and to work, all in that magical virtual world they access through their phones and computers.  As such, it’s critical that businesses, no matter how small, reach their customers on the Web and advertise there. And the best way to do that is through web hosting.  When you sign up with a web hosting service, you can publish a website available to the entire world on the World Wide Web.  In basic terms, you use space on the web that the hosting service either owns outright or leases.  On this space, you build the site on which you’ll upload your informational files.  Now, there are three main kinds of web hosting services: shared, virtual private serving, and dedicated hosting, and we’ll examine these presently.

Shared hosting simply means that you “share” your web space with a bunch of other people.  If you imagine your web page as your apartment, then the shared server is the apartment building.  You might have only a few “roommates” on your server, or you might live in a giant, sprawling apartment complex with thousands of others living in the same building as you.  You and the other tenants not only share the server, but you share an Internet Protocol address as well.  While there are many great things about shared serving, including the low price, keep in mind that response times can be slower and the server can occasionally crash, shutting down all the websites on it.

A virtual private server, or VPS, is one where a server is split, as though that one server were actually multiple servers.  Each of these partitioned pieces of the server actually employs its own operating system.  VPS costs more than shared hosting does (and its users are less prone to spam than those who sign up with a shared hosting program) but does not cost as much as a dedicated server.  Again using the metaphor of a place to live, a virtual server might be thought of as a condominium complex, where each individual condo is sold separately and functions as a separate unit, while all the condos are still part of one complex, a complex owned by the same people.  At ChimeHost, we specialize Xen VPS hosting, OpenVZ vps hosting and Windows VPS hosting.

Last, a dedicated hosting service is one where you’ll get your very own web server, a server you can control, configure and operate however you’d like, even though you most likely won’t own it.  You can have as many domains as you like, and response times are usually fast.  You can also use as much space and bandwidth as you like, and the IPU is all yours.  Naturally, dedicated servers are very expensive

When it comes to Magento hosting, you should look into VPS hosting.   VPS hosting is basically a dedicated server but at a less price.   One of the main reasons for recommending VPS is because Magento requires a lot of system resources and it performs well under VPS environment.  Yes, it is possible to run Magento on shared web hosting but it can lead to slow loading of web pages.   Also, you will get more security with VPS hosting because you are not sharing server resources with other users.  Furthermore, VPS hosting comes with a dedicated IP which is required for SSL.

Some of the core features of Magento include -

• Search Engine Optimization:
  • It is 100 % search engine friendly.
  • Provides meta information for product and categories
  • Generate site map automatically
  • Offers Google site map
• Site Management:
  • You can control many websites and stores from one administrative panel
  • Provides multi language support
  • Google website optimizer is integrated with the software
  • Also, includes powerful content management system
  • Ability to support Multi Language and Multi currency
  • You can use customized template to create unique website
• Order Management:
  • The tool can create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order
  • Also, it can view, edit and create order from administrative panel
  • Additionally, it provides discount, select address and fix customer price
  • You can notify order through email
  • Provides the ability for new order through RSS feed
  • Can create Call center order
  • Can look into shopping cart, last ordered items, and compared products list
• Web services API to make it easy to integrate third-party tools.
• Integration with the United States Postal Service, FedEx, and UPS for real time rate quotes
• Elaborate analytics and reporting options.
• Can generate site map by itself
• You can create many campaigns and buddy coupons with useful coupon rules.
• Ability for digital and downloadable products.
• Can integrate 50 payment gateways.
• Can rewrite URL

There are many alternatives online when it comes to e-commerce but we strongly believe that Magento is one of the best e-commerce solutions that is available online.  Many users might go with e-commerce hosting solution that limit the ability of site admins and prevent them from having full control of their website.   However, with Magento hosting on VPS, users have full control over the server and the website backend.  Even when it comes to paying for Magento hosting, once can expect to pay around $40 per month with unlimited number of products and it will come with cPanel to help manage your website.  Overall, Magento hosting on VPS will give you full control of your server by giving you the ability to setup the server to your website needs.

Shared web hosting is a form of web hosting service where you and other users share space on the World Wide Web, and share an Internet Protocol address as well.  There are some drawbacks to this kind of web hosting: you don’t get to control everything that goes on the server; the response times can be a little slow now and then; if there are spammers on your server, they could send you spam email as you both share an IP address; and a problem with one webpage could send the entire server crashing, which means you might not be able to use your site for a while.  But many website creators, especially people who run small businesses or use web hosting for personal reasons, will tell you that the benefits of shared web hosting far outweigh any potential drawbacks.

For one thing, shared hosting is the most affordable kind of web hosting available.  You can get on the Web, and build and maintain your web site for as little as four dollars a month!  Think of all the customers you can reach for that tiny sum.  (By contrast, a dedicated serving program could set you back a couple hundred dollars every month!)  And if you have a relatively small web site, you won’t need the larger amounts of bandwidth that a dedicated server could provide anyway.  In fact, it’s fair to say that the amount of CPU, webspace and bandwidth that the average shared web hosting service provides is enough for most Internet users—most Internet users by far.

Another benefit of shared web hosting is that it’s very easy to use.  You don’t have to be an expert in computer technology to get on the Net and start designing your page.  The software is controlled and maintained by the server, so there’s nothing to worry about there.  And in many cases the server will even offer you templates or help you get started with your web page creation and design, so you’ll be well taken care of if you happen to be a Web novice.  And there won’t be anything for you to have to install or program, either.

To sum up, there are good reasons why shared web hosting programs are so popular and so sought after.  Their ease of use and low prices help make webpage design a joy instead of a cause of stress.  After all, if you’re starting a small business, you’ll have plenty of things to take care of and to worry about; why add your website to that long list?  Simply sign up with a shared web host, send a few dollars their way every month, create your website with the site builder and use it to tell the world about the great products or services you offer.  It’s so easy, you might want to get a webpage for your dog or your goldfish while you’re at it, just because you can.