A Change in Paradigm: Dedicated ServerI found it hard to believe, but suddenly I was faced with a real problem. Well, I suppose most people would not consider it a huge problem, quite the opposite, in fact. However, it was stressing me out complete, interfering with my writing. I even had trouble sleeping.
What was this horrendous problem? My web site was becoming very popular. So popular, in fact, that I was getting very worried about bandwidth charges.
You see, this was happening after September 11th, 2001, and I had been reading about some people who had created very special and beautiful sites. These sites were so incredible that they attracted lots and lots of visitors. So many visitors that they received hundreds of gigabytes worth of traffic. The webmasters suddenly found themselves charged hundreds or even thousands of dollars for using bandwidth over their allocations.
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Are You a Hosting Hostage?
John Calder
© 2004, John Calder http://www.TheEzine.netIn recent years, the hosting business has become extremely competitive. Not so long ago, the monthly price for an average hosting account for one domain was in the $35 and up range, at a minimum. Now, you can get a hosting account where you can host unlimited domains (up to the disk space and network usage limits of your account), for $25 and under. To try to win more customers in this crowded field, most hosting companies offer bundles of features, included at no extra charge in your hosting plan.
On the surface, all of those features look great, and they are. From single autoresponders to shopping carts, from private name servers to the amazing Fantastico package that lets you install any of numerous software packages, like blogs, content management systems, forums, help desks, and so on, with near one-click ease. But there's a hidden, more self-serving reason the hosting companies offer this convenience to their customers. They hope you'll become dependent enough on the software features they offer that it will discourage you from changing hosting companies.
Their service may suffer at some point, perhaps due to sale of the company, support staff cutbacks, problems within their network, and a variety of other reasons. You may want to change hosting companies for good reason. But if you've set up your entire site using the software your hosting company offers, you won't necessarily be able to take those software packages with you. You can probably find another hosting company that offers the same software, but you'll still have to transfer all of your databases and configuration settings yourself.
One way to help eliminate this problem is to use third-party services where you can - for example, autoresponder services and visitor tracking are good candidates. Your next best choice is to install your own free or paid scripts, that you can delete and reinstall on another server, should a move be necessary.
John Calder is the owner/editor of The Ezine Dot Net. Subscribe Today and get real information YOU can use to help build your online business today! http://www.TheEzine.NetThe Ezine DOT Net RSS feeds are available.
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What Makes For A Good Host?I've had to change web hosts a number of times. In fact, I spent most of this week changing from one host to another. Believe me, it is a major pain, although I have made sure that my site is always ready to move if necessary.
One thing I've become is very aware of the difference between a good host and a bad host. To put it simply (and obviously) a good host makes it easy for you to create and maintain your web site. A bad host gets in the way and makes you angry, unhappy and gives you an ulcer.
The key point to remember when evaluating hosts is the most important quality is responsiveness - of your site and support people. Your site should be up virtually all of the time (unfortunately computer crashes do happen but they should be rare and far between) and it must be fast. In addition, all good hosts react in a timely manner to support issues and questions. You can tell when a host is going bad from the failure of these key areas - unresponsive technical support, slow servers or constant downtime.
This article is intended as a kind of checklist - what is essential, essential if you need it, optional and not important at all? Look it over, then when you go to find a good host pull out the article and make sure it measures up.
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