Cheap Web Hosting

Chapter 10: Cheap Web Host = Suck? A reliable web host is a must for all websites and blogs, but it shouldn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. Not all cheap web host sucks. Some budget web hosts are as good as that VPS hosting deal you were looking at. And hey, that “awesome” web business idea you have in mind doesn’t need a dedicated hosting yet. You can host it on a shared hosting first and make the switch after it accumulate enough buzz. Define Cheap: How Cheap Is Cheap By Today Standard? Quick answer: Below $5/mo, with adequate features. By adequate features, I mean hosting services that come with features that match current market standard. The standards may change from time to time (for example years ago a $5/mo hosting deal can get you only 6 addon domains, 5GB storage, and 10GB data transfer; now everything goes unlimited). At this time of writing, a standard cheap hosting deal should at least cover sufficient power to host at least 50 – 100 not-so-active domains w...

Chapter 9: How to Choose Right Hosting Selecting a web host for your organization’s site is an important – and at times, daunting – undertaking. Beyond finding which Web hosts are out there, it’s a matter of digging through different plans, comparing inclusions, and checking customer reviews. But beyond that, it’s important to look for what isn’t said. This explains why ten of thousands of visitors come to our site for hosting guides and reviews. Questions to ask your web host If this is your first time in choosing a web host, beloware the 30 questions to ask before you decide. There are hundreds of questions that you could ask your potential web host, but by getting the answers to these 30 questions before you sign on the dotted line, you should get a clear picture of what you will receive, what the provider offers long term, how they treat their customers, and if they are an organization you can trust and truly want to work with. What is their uptime guarantee? (Anyth...

Chapter 8: Web Hosting Bandwith and File Transfer Protocol  What Is Bandwidth? Bandwidth is the measure of maximum data that can be transferred by your hosting account in a given time, usually measured in seconds. The term “bandwidth” should not be mixed up with “data transfer” as they are two very different things. Data transfer refers to the consumption of bandwidth. In layman terms, the amount of data being transferred is ‘data transfer’; while the rate of data being transferred is ‘bandwidth’. Data transfer and bandwidth limit used to be a big thing when it comes to choosing a good web host in the past (I wrote a tutorial and a math formula on how to calculate site bandwidth here). Not now anymore. As the average cost of data transfer go lower and lower, hosting companies nowadays are very generous in term of data transfer limit. So, unless you are running a large movie download sites,  I wouldn’t stretch myself too thin on bandwidth and data transfer when selecti...

Chapter 7: Domain Privacy WhoIs data and domain privacy: Do you need it? Every domain name has a publicly accessible record that includes the owner’s personal information such as owner name, contact number, mailing address, and domain registration as well as expiry date. It’s called a WhoIs record and lists the registrant and contacts for the domain. As required by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the domain owners must make these contact information available on WHOIS directories. These records are available anytime to anyone who does a simple WhoIs lookup. In other words, if someone wants to know who owns a Web site, all they to do is run a quick WHOIS search, type the domain name and voila, they have access to the Web site registration details. So, why is this a big deal? Your domain record may also be used in ways that aren’t legitimate or desirable. Since anyone can look up a WhoIs record, spammers, hackers, identity thieves and stalkers ma...

Chapter 6: TLD, TLDcc, and Sub Domains What Are Top Level Domains (TLD)? Let’s get back to our previous examples: Alexa.com, Linux.org, WebRevenue.co, eLearningEuropa.info, Yahoo.co.uk, all examples above end with a different ‘extension’ – .com, .org, .net, .biz… and so on. We call this “extension” as top level domain (shortform:TLD). Examples of other TLD include .uk, .ws, .co.jp, .com.sg, .tv, .edu, .co, .com.my, and .mobi. While most of these TLDs are open for public’s registration, there are strict regulations on certain domain registration. For example the registration of country code top level domains (like .co.uk for United Kingdom) are restricted for the citizens of the corresponding country; and the activities with such domains website are ruled by local regulations and cyber laws. Certain extensions of these TLDs are used to describe the ‘characteristics’ of the website – like .biz for busineses, .edu for education (schools, universities, colleagues, etc), .org for...