Are You Master of Your Own Domain?This is an important topic for anyone who currently has a website and domain name, as well as for anyone interested in building an internet identity. I am sharing not only from personal experience (I have five active websites online at this time) but from my business, Connecticut Secretary, and the projects I have been involved with in creating and building websites for my customers.
Oftentimes customers will approach me after they have already chosen a domain name. What I investigate first is who actually owns that domain name. I no longer ask the customer directly, because 99.9% of the time the response is always "I do!" when in fact many of them unwittingly do not. Determining this is an easy step; you simply go to an independent domain registrar such as Register.com, http://www.register.com, and type in the domain name and choose whois when the results pop up. Feel free to go and type in connecticutsecretary.com and choose whois. You will see that I, Kate Smalley, am listed as the owner and administrative contact for Connecticut Secretary. The technical contact is simply the hosting service I have chosen.
The problem we run into is when individuals have chosen to purchase their domain name through a hosting service at a discounted rate. The hosting service is the company that purchases and owns your domain name, and in essence you sometimes just end up renting it along with your hosting service. This is a great way for the hosting company to ensure continued business. Think about if, in the future, you decide to change hosting services. Who do you think you will have to contact to have your domain redirected to another hosting provider? How anxious do you think they will be to provide service to you? How quickly do you feel they will redirect your url? What will happen if they forget to renew your domain name and someone else obtains control and ownership of it? What happens if that hosting company goes out of business? I have seen it happen. To take this conversation one step further, there are now hosting companies that will purchase the domain in your name, so you are the official owner, but they still retain control over your usage of the account. An important point to remember is that ownership of an account as well as having the ability to use the account are important features when deciding how to purchase your domain name. "...in essence you sometimes just end up renting... "
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Bandwidth Explained
Breal Web Design
Bandwidth Explained by Breal Web DesignWhat is Bandwidth and Data Transfer?
Simply put, bandwidth and data transfer are synonomous, referring to the amount of data sent to and from visitors and your website. It is calculated by the size of your web page and includes all scripting and images on a page. For example, if you have a page totalling 20KB in file size, then when a visitor loads that page on their browser, they are receiving 20KB of data.
This means to calculate bandwidth, you need to consider a) the size of your pages (or website) b) the number of visitors to your website c) the kind of files you offer your visitors.
Most personal websites have only a small amount of data transfer, as their websites are small in file size and they do not have a lot of visitors. Business and professional sites are larger with more visitors and therefore use more data transfer. Breal's entire site is under 2 MB in file size. Some sites may be significantly larger, especially if they offer many graphics, audio, video or download files.
Using Breal as an example, if 1,000 visitors viewed every page on the site, the total data transfer would be 2 GB (1,000 x 2 MB = 2,000 MB) or a single 10 KB file could be viewed 200,000 times and the data transfer would be 2 GB. Most professional level websites will use less than 2 GB bandwidth per month.
Why do some companies charge for bandwidth and data transfer, while others claim you can have unlimited bandwith and data transfer?
Strangely enough, free on the Internet often means fee. Look closely at many of the unlimited offers and you will discover that there is a limit to bandwidth. You may need to contact the company and ask them to define what they mean by 'unlimited'.
For information on Breal's hosting plans, visit http://www.brealweb.com/hosting/hosting.asp
Breal provides cost effective web site design and hosting with a full 30 day money back guarantee. Web hosting even comes with six months free hosting on yearly accounts. To find out more visit http://www.brealweb.com For a complete list of current articles, send any email to mailto:articlelist@brealweb.com
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Web Host EthicsOkay, I've had to change web hosts half a dozen times in the last year and I've noticed a pattern. It's a very clear and simple pattern, actually a series of behaviors on the part of web hosting companies. These behaviors cause these companies to lose customers and gain poor reputations.
To sum it all up in a single word: ethics. Web hosts need to act ethically. As long as they are ethical towards their business and customers, they thrive. When they become unethical, they will fail.
What are web hosting company ethics? This is a code which all hosting companies need to follow if they want to stay in business for the long term.
The most important goal is up-time - Almost anything can be forgiven as long as sites are up and running, as close to 100% of the time as possible. Every feature provided by a hosting company needs to be working and working properly. A small amount of downtime (an hour or two in a month long period) is acceptable, but more than that is not.
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