Archive for September, 2011
Ticketamerica.com has tickets for the miami heat tickets and the new yok knicks tickets and theutah jazz tickets.
Questions To Ask A Web Host
The web hosting industry has become increasingly competitive and there are a myriad of companies out there battling for your business but some won’t definitely have you or your business interests in mind. Cheap web site hosting definitely doesn’t mean the best hosting and neither does signing up with the most expensive companies guarantee you the best service it’s a
confusing world of solutions smoke and mirrors.
Competition’s a great thing but the frenzied levels of promotion has also forced a number of hosts to use questionable marketing tactics and a heavy load of activityrestricting fine print in their contracts. Many webhosting companies don’t make profits by establishing a solid customer base but rather by having a high turnover. The more customers they can have signing up and then dropping off the more dollars they make.
Of course not all hosting services take this attitude and there are some solid companies that respect and encourage their clients.
FINDING THE RIGHT HOST
Finding these gems amongst the rot is the challenge. Some webmasters have to change hosting services 3 or 4 times a year! The downtime involved prevents them doing what they do best to maintain and develop their sites.
Regardless of how good a hosting service may claim to be or how they represent themselves the only way you’ll get to understand what they are offering is to ask questions and then to file the answers for comparison later on. Find out about what others are saying about them too; but bear in mind that if a hosting company has been around for a long time; they won’t have a 100 satisfaction record it’s just not possible given the thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of clients they’ve provided services to over the years. Approach the review process holistically.
Creating a template email to send out to hosting companies is the most time efficient way to cut through the hype and allow you to make apples to apples comparisons.
ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
But what questions should you ask a hosting service? A great deal depends on the type of web site you have. For the purposes of this exercise we’ll use an example of a typical small site that may perhaps be receiving up to a few thousand visitors a day. Even if your site is only a hobby web site or community based you never know when things may change. It isn’t an uncommon situation for a welldesigned and targeted site to grow from a few visitors a day to hundreds or even thousands within a short space of time.
The first step in tracking down the best and most affordable web hosting company for your needs is to use your favorite search engine and visit web
hosts. Briefly look around the site to see if their offer seems interesting and their ideals and ethics in line with yours. Take a look at the company profile if there isn’t one that details the company rather than how good they claim to be run like hell! The rest of your initial enquiries can be handled via their support system.
Be straightforward when you submit your questions to the hosting service let them know that you are shopping around.
NOT ALL HOSTS ARE CREATED EQUAL
The criteria for the first cull is simple if they don’t respond to your enquiry within 24 hours delete them from your contenders list. The same goes if they just send you links to promo material without any personalized message text. To make it more interesting send your email late on a Saturday night wherever the hosting company is in the world it will be the weekend.
The rationale behind the 24 hour deadline is this if a web hosting company can’t respond with presales questions within an acceptable time frame it may be an indication of what their customer support is like. Also many web hosts don’t see the “big picture” which is a fatal mistake. You may be starting out small but who knows how big you’ll become and how many other
people you will refer to their service? A forward thinking company recognizes this and reacts appropriately.
Don’t make it too hard on the hosting companies in your email to start off with you can ask more detailed questions as you reduce the list of possibilities. The following is a template that you might like to use.
SAMPLE EMAIL TEMPLATE:
This example would be suitable for most personal and business startups for initial enquiries. These questions are not highly technical and any hosting service should be able to answer them confidently competently and quickly.
==================
Dear Sales
I am currently in the market for a good web hosting service with excellent customer support and you are among a number of hosting services I am reviewing. I have taken a quick look at what you have to offer on your web site but with so many services offering so many different options it can be pretty confusing. I would greatly appreciate you answering a few questions and your recommendations for a plan that would suit my purposes.
Here is a list of my basic current needs:
At least 500 meg of Hard Drive space Note: change this to suit
At least 2 gig of Bandwidth per month Note: change this to suit. 2 gig is plenty for most to start out with
At least 20 mailboxes Note: change this to suit
FrontPage 2002 Extensions if you use it
PHP 5 even if you don’t need this initially
Perl 5 for running scripts
2 MySQL database capabilities with so many popular applications needing MySQL databases it’s best to get an account that has multiple db’s
FTP access
Server logs access for indepth web site traffic studies later on
Web site traffic monitoring reports
Easy to use admin interface
Any other specific needs
What would you recommend bearing in mind that I’ll need plenty of room to grow. Please also send the URLs of the suggested package and upgrade options pages. Many of your questions will be answered on these pages links will save you from having to hunt around on their sites
Questions:
1. Is there a setup fee?
A setup fee is not necessarily a terrible thing it just needs to be factored into your budget
2. What is your uptime record?
Look for at least 99.9 uptime over a month.
3. Can I upgrade my plan at any time?
A good hosting service will allow you to change your plan at any time
4. What are your excess bandwidth charges?
Although unlikely you will get excess traffic during startup phase it’s important to know how much you will be charged if you use over and above your quota for data transfer. Data transfer or “bandwidth” refers to the amount of data going in and out of your site e.g. publishing up information or requests from visitors for information including page views.
5. How often will my site be backed up?
In a number of cases you’ll find that the cheaper the price the less likely your site will be backed up on a regular basis
6. Do you offer secure server and ecommerce capabilities shopping carts etc. included or as an upgrade?You may not want this in the beginning but it’s handy to have
7. Do you offer an affiliate program or referrer bonuses?If you settle with a host and you are happy with the service no doubt you’ll tell others. Why not profit from that it can subsidize the running of your site or even turn into a good earner for you!
8. Is your free tech support available 7 days a week? A VERY important point many offer this but sometimes all you’ll get is a recorded or autoresponder message during weekends. Telephone support is not a necessity for most people a good email or online ticket based support system can actually be better than the phone as it provides a record for both parties. Many helpdesk telephone support people have very little technical knowledge they tend to rely on “wizards”.
9. Why should I choose you over other hosts offering the same sorts of features and pricing?
Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions
Me.
These questions and points are just to get you started in the reviews process and will allow you to weed out many of the flybynighters. It may seem like a lot to ask but an experienced staffer should be able to complete the questions very quickly. Always be polite when posing questions as the answers will be provided by a human being with feelings as well. By asking questions in a courteous manner you will get the relationship off to a good start.
When composing the email skip a couple of lines between each question to encourage the person responding to put their remarks under the relevant question. This will give you a good record to refer back to in the future. Always respond to each response with a brief thank you note.
Author: John J. Ralph
website: http://www.thinkhost.com/?p=6268bb7d
About the writer: Author has teamed up with ThinkHost to provide you with a Special Offer. ThinkHost is a provider earthfriendly affordable web hosting starting at 9.95/month. Use this coupon code on their package signup form: ThinkHost20 to receive 20 off any of their web hosting packages.
Profitable Grounds Based On Which One Wants To Enter Into The Hosting Business Today
Is web hosting inevitable?
The fact is that everybody requires a web host whatever people say about the intense and increasing competition between web hosting services. Even if the host is a free service one cannot exist online without a host. No matter how stiff the competition is there is a vast difference between selling a luxury product and a product that is inevitable. Starting from area of influence amongst business associates friends and even relations there are abundant marketing methods and tricks that one can employ to ensure that ones web hosting business secure clients. As everybody requires web host it is all made easy.
Constant Earnings can be generated from Web Hosting
Clients tend to pay once with most of the businesses. This is the reason why real estate ownership has often been a tempting business for many. Once one has developed ones property one will keep on earning rental income from doing practically nothing for many years. Web hosting has to be online real estate equivalent. Soon one gets a client; he/she will keep on paying monthly quarterly semiannually or even annually for many years until he/she discontinues using web hosting service.
Getting Ones Own Hosting Paid
To reduce their own operating costs many folks go into the web hosting business. For example some of the hosting capacity that has been acquired for the business can easily be used as a consistent and steady host for their very own websites and blogs.
About the writer: Webhosting can take a lot of your attention unless your webhost gives you good uptime and prompt support. Hostgator is one of the best web hosts in the hosting coupons lists where you can host your website and blogs and also get upto 20 discount
Online Video Streaming
One of the major changes online would be the popularity of online videos. A couple of years ago the concept of video streaming was nothing but just a distant reality. However in December 2006 online video achieved dominance.
Online streaming has become more and more in demand like a micro video channel. There are thousands and thousands of online video which are searched by a lot of online users. The number of television content has also increased. You could easily download videos of the trailers of the latest movies along with entertaining video streams and electronic seminars.
Though the clarity of videos that are streamed online may be less compared to a television set but this lack in clarity is compensated with great availability. Video streams are usually sent through email are included in blog websites and are also key parts of a lot of social network websites.
Video streaming and its usage is a growing phenomenon that has a lot of various positive and useful applications. It is able to provide many opportunities for individuals to have the ability of sharing footage of family events with their other family members. Entertainment and music videos could also be shared. You could easily download television shows. And on a more functional and practical note business could be done more effectively with the technology of video streaming.
One more benefit of this would be its strong potential to have more backlinks that would be able to increase visitors to your video stream. These visitors could stick around and check what you are offering on your online business.
About the writer: Do not waste your time with bad web hosting services. Go for trusted and reliable hosting providers bluehost or hostgator. Sign up today for one penny!
