Web Hosting – All You Need To Know

The internet has become an information backbone in our age, but computers led to growth of the internet since it enabled transmission of information from one point to another. However with the entry of sophisticated phones into the market, it led to the creation of mobile webs which allowed these devices to also access the web. Currently in the world there are more than 5 billion mobile subscribers with most of these subscribers having internet browsing capabilities. Thus website designers have to put in mind the mobile users who have smaller screen size compared to computer users. When websites are not mobile web friendly websites the content is degraded when viewed in a mobile device. Therefore businesses should always consider to have a mobile friendly websites so that they can reach a larger number of potential clients without degrading the content and information.

Information degradation also happens because most mobile web browsers will always try to access and display content from your site whether they are mobile friendly websites or not. Most search engines have an option of choosing results to show only mobile websites when using a mobile browser. The result would be ranked according to their being mobile friendly websites which come first . Being among mobile friendly websites would improve your chances to be on the results when search is done either on the computer or a mobile device. Most websites which offer money transfer services and the bigger players in the internet businesses are on the forefront of advocating the use of mobile friendly websites. This is seen by their use of mobile friendly website in addition to computer friendly website.

While most mobile developers may argue that creating an app may be easier for a mobile device, it should be noted that the apps cannot be used on two different platforms unless the developer creates two different apps. Mobile friendly websites may solve this problem especially for businesses that do require minimal functionality on their websites. The mobile friendly websites can be used on any device that has a web browser. With the current internet speed available on mobile devices especially on smart phones it enables mobile users to view a great variety of content from their mobile phones. This include live music and video streaming therefore advertising campaigns can be carried out from your mobile friendly website which can have audio and visual content. While it may seem complicated to make your website mobile friendly its easy and can be done by a professional mobile website designer or by you. This is due to the large number of tools available on the internet for converting websites to mobile friendly websites. These tools include WPtouch, MoFuse, Mipping Mobilizer, Mobify, Wirenode, Wptap, mobiSiteGalore, WordPress Mobile Pack, Zinadoo, Winksite, MobilePress just to mention a few. These tools can be found online, some for free and some at a small fee.

With this in mind and the large number of smart phones being sold the world over businesses should consider having mobile friendly websites. This applies to both large and small businesses which want to cover a wider market and have a large advertising platform. For more information on mobile friendly websites why not visit the link in this article.

When buying hosting for your web site or blog you want to be certain that it will be reliable and will enable you to provide a good user experience for your visitors.

So what exactly should you be looking for in reliable web hosting? Well the following should be considered:

Loading Speed – Your visitors will want your pages to load as fast as possible. If they are slow visitors may give up and look elsewhere, or if they do wait they are less likely to return in the future. As far as ranking on Google is concerned slow loading is a negative factor because they want their users to be happy.

This should not be a problem with the major hosting companies but with very cheap or free services it is more likely, as overloading a server is a way of keeping costs down.

It is also worth considering the location of the web server and the location of your target audience. Ideally they should be geographically close, as pages will load a bit slower for users on the other side of the world from the server.

Uptime – No host will guarantee 100% uptime (at least not on an entry level package) but downtime should be limited. If people try to find your site and get an error message they will probably not try again. You should look for an uptime guarantee in excess of 99.9% with some financial penalty if this is not met. Clearly with free hosting this is not possible.

Resources Available – Some packages have a fixed limit on resources like disk space and bandwidth and others are sold on an “unlimited” basis. You do not want your URL to display a message saying that the site is unavailable because you have exceeded your bandwidth allowance. This should not be a problem if dealing directly with any of the major hosting companies, as limits are set they are well above those a new site is likely to need. However, if dealing with a reseller, be careful about bandwidth limits.

Support – Most users of hosting require help at some point. If the problem is urgent you want assistance immediately, particularly if the problem relates to the availability of your site. The major hosting companies will have 24/7 technical support by phone, chat or email but resellers and free services usually offer much more limited support.

Some hosting companies are now partnered with CloudFlare which makes it easy to serve you site via their network. This speeds up loading for users distant from the server, improves security and takes a load off the web server. For full information on this see “Use CloudFlare To Significantly Improve Site Security and Page Speed”.

If you are new to hosting I would definitely recommend that you sign-up with one of the major hosting companies which will provide the reliability and support that you need.

Our current recommendation is HostGator.

It is easy to overlook the relationship between web hosting and SEO but actually this is becoming increasingly important. If you want to get your site/blog ranked highly on Google you will do yourself no favors by cutting costs on hosting.

So how are hosting and SEO linked? Simple really, Google want their users to get what they want quickly so that they continue to use the search engine. Google therefore do not look kindly on sites that provide a poor user experience. This is can be caused by:

Slow Loading Speed

Nobody wants to have to wait more than a few seconds for a page to load. If a site is very slow to load the user may give up, and go back to Google to select another site, or wait to see what comes up and then go back to Google. The user is unlikely to request another page, assuming that will also be slow, or return to the site in the future. The result is an unhappy visitor and a black mark from Google.

High Bounce Rate

One of the factors that is becoming increasing important for SEO is bounce rate. A user “bounces” if they go straight back to Google after seeing the page that comes up. This implies that the content was not particularly relevant to the search term or was poor quality. Either way it is a negative factor in terms of ranking for the search term.

As mentioned above a user may also bounce because the site is slow, regardless of the quality of the content. So a slow site can have a double negative effect.

Too Much Downtime

If a user finds your site on the search engine and clicks it only to receive an error message, that is a poor user experience. No site can be available 100% of the time but excessive downtime will count against it.

These problems can be experienced due to:

Overloading Servers

Entry level hosting packages are based on shared hosting where many user’s sites are hosted on one server. If the server is overloaded the performance level will suffer. This is a particular risk with free hosting where there is no contractual service level.

Lack of, or Poor Management/Support

It is important that the hosting company monitors the servers to ensure that users do not do anything that uses an unfair share of the server resources and also do not do anything unethical such as spamming. The former will impact the performance of the other users of that server and, in the worse case, the latter could get the server IP address blocked affecting all users.

Once again the risks are greatest with free hosting, particularly as the absence of any payment makes it easy to sign up anonymously.

Another key point relates to support. Unless you really know what you are doing you are likely to need help at some point. Providing quality support is costly so with free hosting it is likely to be via email during business hours (so if your site goes down on Friday evening it is hard luck). Even with paid hosting, where you expect 24/7 support, the quality varies.

Location of Web Server

It is inevitable that a site will take slightly longer to load when the user is on the other side of the world from the web server.  See post Location of Website Hosting Company – Does It Matter? for more information.

Actually there is a solution to this geographic issue which also reduces the load on your web server and this is to use a Content Delivery Network. See post Use CloudFlare To Significantly Improve Site Security and Page Speed for more information on that.

Overall it is clear that there is a strong relationship between hosting and SEO and you will be well advised to pay for a good hosting package. Our recommendation is HostGator whose service is the best we have had personal experience of and they are partnered with CloudFlare which makes using that Content Delivery Network easy.

Most entry level web hosting is sold on an unlimited basis. This unlimited web hosting can cover the following aspects:

• Disk Space – The space needed to store the website(s) and associated media.
• Bandwidth – The bandwidth used by visitors to the website(s).
• Domains Hosted – The number of separate domain names that can be used in one hosting account.
• Sub-Domains – The number of sub-domains that can be created.
• Email Accounts – The number of email accounts that can be set-up.
• FTP Accounts – The number of FTP accounts that can be created within the package.
• Databases – the number of databases that can be maintained (each WordPress site requires its own database).

Hosts will often restrict one aspect in their basic packages (such as number of domains allowed or databases you can create) so that there is step up to a more expensive package.

These packages are based on shared hosting where multiple users are hosted on a physical web server and share the resources of that server. The good hosts will carefully monitor activity to ensure that one user does not use too much of the resources available, to the detriment of the other users of that server. If this does happen they will suggest to that user that they upgrade to their own server.

It is therefore clear that in this case “Unlimited” does not mean infinite. It effectively means that there is no set limit but both parties have to be reasonable about usage.

Working this way does have advantages for both parties:

• For users it keeps things simple and avoids any worries about, for example, how much bandwidth might be needed.
• For hosts it sounds good from a sales point of view not to set any arbitrary limits and they know from experience that where limits are set most users get nowhere near them.

So what are the limitations. Well most Terms Of Use are a bit vague on this. You will not be allowed to use the unlimited disk space to store files unconnected with your web site and there may be limits on the number of files you can store, the size of databases etc.. However, in general you are reliant on the host being reasonable bearing in mind that these services are intended for personal users and small business web sites.

Unlimited Web Hosting is a marketing term which cannot be taken literally, however that is not to say that there is anything wrong with these packages. For most users they offer a simple way to get a site online and the chances are they you will not experience any problems and will be happy with the service. You just need to be aware that if your site gets busy you may have to upgrade.

You might also be interested in our article on CloudFlare which offers a means of reducing the load on your web server whilst also improving the service for users in other parts of the world.

Did you know that there is a way that you can improve your site security and improve your page speed and its FREE!

I am talking about the service provided by CloudFlare. This is a CDN (Content Delivery Network) and distributed DNS (Domain Name Server) service offering both free and paid services. The paid service is aimed more at the corporate user and the free service will be fine for most users.

So what does it do? Well basically it acts as a proxy server standing between your visitors and your hosting service. You change the DNS servers associated with your domain name to the CloudFlare name servers and all requests for your pages are routed to them. CloudFlare cache your static content so minimizing the need for calls to your host.

This gives you the following benefits: Read the rest of this entry »

You might think that a domain names search is a simple thing to do and you will quickly select and register a domain name for your website or blog. But actually there is quite a lot to think about. Assuming that you want the site to rank in the search engines you will need to consider:

Registering a new domain name vs buying an existing one

Generally, registering a new domain name will be cheaper and you have a lot more scope to get exactly what you want but an existing domain will be easier and quicker to get ranked. If buying an existing domain make sure it is indexed (i.e. already appearing on the search results).

GoDaddy are one of the top domain registrars where you can obtain both types of domain names.

The best suffix to use
If you are aiming at a worldwide audience you are still best using a .com domain. If this is not possible the normal advice has been to use .net or .org but people have reported good results with others such as .biz and .info. So if you can’t get a .com go for whatever allows you to register the best domain name. Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to set-up and control your own blog you will need a blog hosting service. Of course you will not find this specifically, so you need a web hosting service that is user friendly for the type of blog you want.

Before signing up with such a service you might just consider if a free blog on one of the big blogging sites like Google’s Blogger or WordPress.com would meet your needs. These allow you to quickly create a blog but you do not have the flexibility that comes with hosting your own. Read the rest of this entry »

To set-up, control and run your own website or blog you need webhosting so that you can load the site on to a web server with a good internet connection. It is technically possible to run your own web server but there are a number of difficulties which make this impractical for most people (for more information look at Home Hosting). The best way to go is to sign up with a company providing webhosting services.

So What is a Webhosting Service?
A Webhosting service means the provision of a web server with a high speed internet connection on to which you can load your site. To do this you connect to the web server via an FTP client and transfer files as necessary. The hosting provider deals with all maintenance of the server and its connectivity so you don’t have to worry about anything other than maintaining your site.

Most hosts offer tools to help you build a site easily but you need to aware that these often lock you in because you cannot easily transfer the site to another host. Most also offer easy installation and set-up of third party tools like WordPress (if you are setting up your first website you are recommended to use WordPress). Read the rest of this entry »

We hear a lot these days about “the cloud” so what is cloud hosting?  You can use applications in the cloud, store data in the cloud and host your website in the cloud. In practical terms cloud computing is simply a set of pooled computing resources and services delivered over the internet. If you produce a diagram showing how this works it resembles a cloud.

If you use applications or store data in the cloud the big benefit is that you can assess them from anywhere, on any device, provided you have an internet connection. Hosting is rather different, here the key benefits are flexibility and resilience. Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress is a favorite tool for webmasters because it makes setting up a blog or website (or a combination) quick and easy. It is well optimized for the search engines and easy to update and maintain.

If you are going to use WordPress then you should make sure that your host makes the installation easy and provides support if you have any issues. Most of the major hosting companies do this, but not all. Read the rest of this entry »