WBC Web Hosting

When you first start thinking about building your first web site you are faced with a lot of choices. You need to choose a domain name, but also somebody to register that domain name. You need to decide on whether you’ll use a CMS tool like Joomla or a blog engine like Wordpress, or maybe you’ll purchase a nice template and use that. One of the biggest choices you’ll need to make is your hosting service. The right hosting service can be the difference between spending time installing and configuring your site and spending time adding content.

Once you’ve chosen your hosting service you will be asking yourself one more important question. Do I choose shared hosting or dedicated hosting? There is not an easy one or the other answer to that question. In fact I’m having trouble even phrasing it generically so that you can size up your situation and decide, but I’ll lay down a few rules and gotcha’s and see where we end up.

On the surface shared hosting seems like a great deal. For instance from Go Daddy you can get shared hosting plan for just $3.99 a month. The plan will give you 5GB of disk space and 250GB bandwidth. For a little more, $6.99 you get 100GB disk and 1000 GB bandwidth. Now, I just used Go Daddy as an example, but Host Gator and others are similar, some with slightly higher prices and some with slightly lower, but all have the same rules.

Hidden somewhere in your shared hosting agreement there will be a clause about not hogging system resources. What that means is that even if your site is not busy 99% of the time, if you get a big spike they have the right to shut you down. You see, the factor to be concerned with is not bandwidth or disk storage, it’s CPU cycles. It’s not average CPU cycles over the month, if you spike even for a short time all hosting services will shut down your shared account.

How do I know about the shared host shutdown? It happened twice to me. I’m not complaining, that’s the price of having a successful web site while paying for bargain basement hosting. In my one case I got shut down because I had 8000 hits in about an hour. My daily average was about 500 hits. It seems that the blog engine I was using was using too much CPU time on my shared host, so they shut me down. Okay, so you’re thinking that you can go shared and when you get to around 7000 then you can switch over to dedicated. Maybe that’ll work, but in another case I was shut down with just 346 hits. Now for the 346 hit case my host sent me the log file and to my eyes it didn’t seem that I was using much CPU at all. It showed my account using 100% CPU for .2 seconds. It also showed (in another case) my process taking 29 seconds, but using 0% CPU. I believe this was a case of mistaken identity. They saw that their server was slow and looked for long running processes, but didn’t look at actual cycles taken. The long wait by the way was because of a YouTube vid running on my site.

So, after a full year on two shared hosting accounts, from two different companies, it was time to try my hand at dedicated hosting. One thing you must know about dedicated hosting is that you are running and responsible for all aspects of the box. That means that you are “root”. There is nobody else monitoring for hung processes, nobody else installing software for you, but the best part is nobody kicking you off for using too much CPU for 10 seconds of the month.

My shared hosting accounts were $6.99 and $10 (total of $17/month). My new dedicated hosting account started at $79/month, but I bumped up the memory and CPU on the box and the final price is $111/month. That’s a huge difference when you’re just starting out, and over the first year I’ve saved $1200 going that way, but now I feel to move forward with my web sites I need the freedom that dedicated hosting allows. Freedom to have a busy day, freedom to be successful.

I don’t want to make you shy away from shared hosting when you’re just starting out. It’s a great way to get your feet wet, establish a proof of concept and build your knowledge while keeping your budget low. Many small businesses or personal pages may never need more than a shared hosting account. For me, one year on shared hosting gave my little business enough time to grow enough for me to justify paying for dedicated hosting.

As a closing note, my ongoing move from my shared hosting accounts to my dedicated hosting account has taken about two weeks. The first couple of days was experimenting and learning, followed by a few days moving my best performing sites over and the last week has been spent moving the rest of my web sites over, cleaning up security and doing more learning. In the end, I chose Go Daddy as my dedicated host. I figured they deserved it, at least when they shut me down at 8000 hits it was conceivable that I was over stressing my shared account. As for the other company, the one who shut me down with the log file which proved nothing at 350 hits, sometimes you only get one mistake and in the web business when your site is having it’s best day ever and your host shuts you down without good reason, it’s time to move on.

Before starting your website you must deem choosing an appropriate domain name for your business and that is the key of your success.

In this article you will learn the hit-and-miss art of choosing suitable domain name into 10 specific points. When summarized, these advices boil down to the following:

Tip – 1:

Hang on to simplicity. Take this is an example; “www.mymobileonlinestore.com” OR “www.mobiles.com” you better know that which one is easily memorable and easily typed. Good domain names are frankly memorable and easily typed. Commonly you need to keep them short.

Tip – 2:

Register a free domain name. (Yes its True) This is another great advantage for webmaster and individuals; Top USA hosting providers offer free domains even free for life with their unmatched hosting plans, you will learn more about this in the end of this article.

Tip – 3:

Some time plural formations may give you a great advantage; depends on your business site, if you are selling book so ‘books.com’ would be a correct choice instead of ‘book.com’ therefore don’t be fearful using plural formations when you need them.

Tip – 4:

You need to stay away from hyphens. All the big and popular sites hasn’t used any hyphens, because they tend to produce confusion; for e.g. “www.search-the-web.com” OR unique “www.google.com” which one you prefer. Other minus point about hyphens is that usually users might not type any hyphens or they may forget which can lead to losing visitors.

Tip – 5:

Are you planning to spread your business mostly in the U.S if not go globally; nearly all countries have their own domain name brands; you can fine the next finest choice. For instance if you are in UK, use “.co.uk” instead of .com

Tip – 6:

Avoid using words that hard to spell. Likewise stay away from using the words that are spelled in a different way in few countries. For instance, U.S. use “color” and GB & Australia use “colour” thus using such words may lessen your site traffic.

Tip – 7:

When you find your desired domain name, after that you must make sure that there will be no trademark issue etc. with your chosen domain name.

Tip – 8:

Branded name is always the prefect choice, if you have truly planed a long term successful business. For e.g. if you have your brand name (Ferrari) using ‘ferrari.com’ would be the ideal choice rather than a little generic ‘fastcars.com’ plus you can trademark your branded domain name, so no one will be allowed using your domain name.

Tip – 9:

Another thing which you need to consider is avoid domains that are very alike to existing names. Otherwise you may face a legal issue (tip7); your brand should be unique compare to your competitions.

Tip – 10:

Watch out. Domain name expires on you, to get it back you must be alert usually competitors wait to get these special domains some how, because you don’t possess the domain, basically you are leasing it from a provider, that is the reason why any one can grab that if it gets expire.

“Summary”

Even though choosing a domain can be a complicated process, however with all these guidelines to mull over we hope you have mastered that how to get your desired domain name. To conclude the web hosting plan you are going for must fulfill your website requirements, because this is extremely important to host your website with Top Hosting Provider, and you can register Free Domain Name too.

There are Top USA Web Hosting Providers, they offer Free Top level Domain Name and many most wanted features. You can easily compare that which web host can fulfill your website taste of desires.

Many churches don’t have websites simply because no one knows the process to obtain a website. They fear the unknown but today we will demystify website hosting and website design. I am going to make it very easy to understand with only three simple steps. Ok lets get started:

Step 1: First, you need a domain name. A domain name is like the street address for your house. It is where people find you online. There are many companies out there that you can purchase a domain name from. www.musiclanehosting.com is one and www.hosting.webdesignforministry.com is another. Using one of the companies above, you would click on the link to go to that company’s web site. On their page you should see a search bar for domains. It will say something like “Start a Domain Name search” enter the desired name you want people to find you by: note this might take sometime if the name you want is already taken. Every name has an extension “.com, .org, .net, .cc, etc…” think of it like an area code except this is at the end instead of the beginning. Here is an example domain name: calvarychristian.org. Once you have created a domain name that you like and is not already taken purchase it.

Step 2: Next, you need to buy some property or as it is called online “hosting”. Unlike house buying, where your address comes with the lot, on the web you purchase the address (domain name) and lot (hosting) separate from each other. You can purchase your lot (hosting) from a hosting company. Note: most domain name companies also sell hosting. Both companies above offer hosting. There are many factors that come into play when purchasing hosting but for first time buyers it is simple. Purchase the basic plan. Once you have purchased your hosting plan you need to associate your domain name to the hosting plan. Again most companies will walk you through this process while you are purchasing your hosting account. They will ask you something like do you have a domain name you want to associate this hosting account with. They then give you a drop down box to select any domain name you already have purchased. You just have to select the domain name from the drop down and finish the setup process for your hosting account. The two companies above offer 24/7-tech support so help is always just a phone call away.

Step 3: Finally, you need a house (website). Not all hosting and domain name companies offer website design so you might have to look elsewhere for a website designer or design company. www.webdesignforministry.com is a web design company that specializes in churches and ministries. Whatever company you go with should be able to upload all the files necessary so you don’t have to worry about anything.

Conclusion: Well, that is it. Think of websites and the web as home building. Buy some property (get hosting), register an address (buy a domain name) and build a house (design a website). I think the hardest part in this process is building the website because it deals with artist abilities. Most hosting companies have free website builders but they tend to be very generic and template based. For my money I go with custom every time. It is unique and mine alone. There are no duplicates of it anywhere else on the web.