Print this articleThere is a big difference between saying you want a website of your own and putting it all together so its a reality. Whether you have a great idea for an interactive website or just want to put up a blog under your own domain name though, there is more to think about than just the initial idea. The first thing you have to arrange after coming up with the idea of your site is the hosting. Hosting allows your site to be up on the internet so visitors can come and see what you’ve created.
A great place to get free hosting is at HostBot.com, they provide all the bells and whistles that the more famous hosting sites do, but they do it for no charge. This isn’t the kind of free hosting that you’re use to seeing, there are no forced ads and no incredibly small storage space or minuscule bandwidth limitations. All the features they offer are top of the line for anyone providing free hosting. If you look into their free PHP web hosting, you’ll see that some of what they offer is: 5GB of space and 2.5GB of bandwidth. This is usually more than enough space for running your own forum or blog. And best of all, remember their are no forced advertisements or sponsored ads put on your site. The only thing your visitors will see will be the things you want them to see.
Treat yourself to the best in free web hosting, check out HostBot.com today.
Check and see what they offer!
Features for all accounts
Disk Storage - 1,500 GB
Host UNLIMITED Domains
Free Drag and Drop Site Builder
Free Domain Name
Support International Domain Names
POP3/POP3 Secure Email Support - 2,500
IMAP/Secure IMAP Email Support - 2,500
2 Different Web Based Email Solutions
Forwarding Email Accounts Unlimited
Email Autoresponder Unlimited
Gigs of Site Transfer - 15,000 GB/mo
Add-on Domains Unlimited
Parked Domains Unlimited
Subdomains Unlimited
Additional FTP Accounts - 1,000
MySQL Databases - 50
PostgreSQL Databases 50
CGI-BIN
CGI Library
Server Side Includes
Frontpage 2000/2002 Extensions
Account "Control Panel"
FTP Access
Shell Access (SSH)
Override .htaccess Support
Anonymous FTP
Webmail (Browser Based Email)
Log Files + Site Stats
Customizable Error Pages
Web File Manager
Custom Cronjobs
Hotlink Protection
Spam Assassin Protection
Fantastico Script Support
CGI/DataBases
PHP 5
Perl 5
Python
Ruby / Ruby On Rails (NEW!!)
Support For Custom PHP.INI Files
MySQL 5 Database Server
PostgreSQL Database Server
Javascript/ DHTML
Flash / Shockwave
Free website plug-in scripts
Message Forum
Form-mail Scripts
PHP Nuke / Post Nuke
Guestbook
Web Blogs / Wordpress / b2evolution
Mailing Lists
Image Galleries / Coppermine
Poll and Survey Software
Web Auction Software
Moodle
Tikiwiki
Mambo and Joomla
phpForm Generator
Help Center/Support Ticket
E-commerce Features
SSL Secure Server
OS Commerce Shopping Cart
Agora Shopping Cart
Cube Cart Shopping Cart
Zen Cart Shopping Cart
Free Generated Certificate
Password Protected Directories
OpenPGP / GPG Encryption
Multimedia Features
Supports Streaming Video
Supports Streaming Audio
Real Audio & Video Support
Flash Support
Macromedia Shockwave
MIDI File Support
Add Own MIME Types
With BlueHost, you can depend on:
Highest customer service
Quality equipment
Maximum guaranteed uptime
Highly functional tools for administration
The leading feature set available
Secure and reliable backups
Solid and honest business
Time To Switch
Most people, especially advanced web based business owners or webmasters often change their hosts because they often find a better service than the current host is offering. The industry is very competitive, they want a better deal with lots of features. It is natural for webmasters to look for a good hosting company, researching on them to check their offers and their quality.
However, there are times those popular hosts could give you a headache. Regardless of positive feedbacks by many, bad things can happen unfortunately. So, you can be the one to think and look for another server in the future. It is actually not a bad idea to keep an eye on new and popular web hosts in case your host becomes too big to provide a good support. In any case, whatever the reason people have, here are some basic steps to change hosts as fast and as smooth as possible:
Find A New Host
There is not much to tell you. You really need to have good reasons why you want to switch to a new host from the current one. Don't just decide because they are cheap. Read peoples' reviews, especially how they provide customer services. Ask also how they can help you with transferring your site. Transfer fee can be free in many web hosts, and they should generally do everything for you, but it's better if you can do it by yourself unless the site is extremely big. Check also what type of control panel they use. Switching to an unfamiliar control panel is usually not good. You can surely get used to it, but it's so much easier if they offer the same you have been using.
Back-up Everything
After finding a new web host, start downloading all the files from the current web host. This seems so obvious, but how important this is! You don't want to lose all those important files even though most hosting companies blatantly advertise that they make regular backups. Sometimes, they can lose your files. You should also know that hosts usually don't guarantee the safety of your data. If you read their TOS carefully you'll find that they are not responsible for any loss of data. Serious webmasters regularly download backups everyday. You should at least do that every other day. Besides, another copy doesn't hurt, does it?
Uploading Files
Upload your website via a FTP program. Make sure you have an access for FTP uploading at the new host. User name and password for uploading files by using FTP program are usually as same as your login information at the admin control panel. Get used to their control panel if it's a new one. Check all files are in right folders and keep the same structure as they were in your old web host.
Moving Databases
If your website is database driven, using php programming language for example, you will have to upload a database to a new host. Before that though, you will have to create a new database. Keep the same database name so you won't get confused. The username also should be the same if you can. The password can be changed, and if you do so, make sure to change it also on the appropriate config. file so that this file can access to your database.
Changing NameServer
This takes 2 days sometimes, depending on the host. Your new web host should email you with the service you have just bought along with the instruction of DNS and link to your admin control panel. Go to your domain registrar and change the old DNS to new one. Check the confirmation email for the change to make sure the process was complete.
Reseller Hosting, What is it?
Reseller hosting is a type of hosting services where an existing hosting company sells you some of their hosting space and amount of bandwidth on a server. The monthly fee is usually more than that of standard hosting, but compensates for the increased amount of space, bandwidth, and the additional software licenses that sometimes have to be purchased for use on a reseller hosting account.
The alloted resources are then available to be distributed to other sites or customers for standard web hosting. Each individual website hosted off the reseller packaging usually receives their own control panel account (such as cPanel or Plesk) for their use. Customers percieve absolutely no difference between a company using a reseller web hosting account and a host which leases their own server(s).
The Advantages
There are many advantages for you to buy a reseller hosting package. While the bandwidth and space may be more expensive per unit than that purchased with a dedicated server, reseller accounts allow the space and bandwidth to be purchased in smaller portion. That way smaller hosts aren't wasting resources - and subsequently money. This allows new hosts to grow into a dedicated server instead of taking the large initial plunge with the much higher monthly fee. A start up host may now yield a small profit instead of a large loss month after month.
A hard drive might go bad on a server, an operating system might be corrupt, a cable might break. There are just things that could go wrong at any time. With reseller hosting, the majority of the time someone else is responsible for the problem. While it may be little piece of mind if your customers experience some downtime, it is someone else's server, and it won't be your responsibility to install security updates to key software or replace hardware that has failed.
Yahoo! Hosting For Beginners:
Let me say this first. Their support is probably one of the best and very professional. They offer 24-hour toll-free phone supports for all of their packages. This is a good news for any new webmasters.
Below are the features.
| Disk space Number of web pages supported* | 5GB 5–25,000 web pages | 10GB 5–50,000+ web pages | 20GB 5–100,000+ web pages |
| Data transfer Number of visitors supported/mo.* | 200GB 10,000–500,000 visitors/mo. | 400GB 10,000–1 million visitors/mo. | 500GB 10,000–1.2 million visitors/mo. |
| Business email addresses (like info@widgetdesigns.com) | 200 | 500 | 1000 |
| Free domain name (like www.widgetdesigns.com) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Easy tools to create a professional site Learn more | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Support for third-party design tools (like FrontPage and Dreamweaver)** | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced scripting and database tools (like PHP, Perl, and MySQL) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 24-hour toll-free phone support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| User-friendly control panel | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Web site enhancements (like guestbooks and visitor counters) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Exclusive online marketing discounts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The price is reasonable, not the best, but their server should be the most reliable one. You will have no problem with down time at all. One of the biggest and most visited E-commerce site offers excellent hosting services.
Their hosting packages are at very affordable prices. The features they offer are a huge amount of disk space, high monthly transfer allowance and unlimited add-on domains.
I like their free domain name for life + free domain privacy registration. Privacy registration costs about $9. Other popular features are unlimited sub-domains, unlimited pop e-mail accounts, unlimited e-mail forwarding, 100 MySQL databases and much more.
Price? 5.95/Mo. Great deal! Host Monster is one of the best web hosting services IMO.
The admin panel they use is Cpanel XP. All the icons look like Windows XP. The admin front has bunch of icons you can select. It looks pretty easy to use. Another thing I like is that they have wordpress option. Some web hosts don't have this feature, so those who like to blog on wordpress have to download. It is kind of strange that such a popular blog program is not available in many web hosts.
Let's focus on another feature. Gigs of Site Transfer - 2,000 GB/mo. Any webmaster wants big bandwidth. Usually web space is enough for any web host out there today. But when it comes to the bandwidth, you may not find web hosts with generous bandwidth capacity. Average is somewhere 50 GB to 80GB. So, Host Monster is definitely one of the bests to offer big badnwidth capacity.
Here is the list of their hosting package:
Disk Storage 200 GB
Host UNLIMITED DOMAINS
Free Domain Name
Free Drag and Drop Site Builder
Support International Domain Names
POP3/POP3 Secure Email Support Unlimited
IMAP/Secure IMAP Email Support Unlimited
Gigs of Site Transfer 2,000 GB/mo
Forwarding Email Accounts Unlimited
Email Autoresponder Unlimited
Add-on Domains Unlimited
Parked Domains Unlimited
Subdomains Unlimited
Additional FTP Accounts Unlimited
MySQL Databases 100
PostgreSQL Databases 100
When I look for a new web host, the support and reliability is the first thing I look for. Then the cost, I think. Cheap web hosts are popular, but you don't want to have any trouble, ending up in moving to another host. That is a pain and time consuming. And you will lose money in the end.
30 day money back guarantee thing is offered by many web hosts. This is a good sign. You can rely on them. After all, the trickiest part is the cost. Sometimes they offer a great deal, but it's only for the first month! Monthly cost is cheap, but you need to pay for 2 years up front.
Due to the severe competition among web hosting companies, the services they offer these days are pretty much the same. The differences are usually the bandwidth, sub-domain or domain names you can host, and the amount of data base you can use. So, it all comes down to "get the same stuff at the best price".
But for business people to do business via their websites, they would find out free hostings are simply not enough to meet their needs. In this blog, I would focus on paid web hostings more than free ones though I would certainly review some cool free web hostings out there.
Hundreds of web hostings exist online today, and it is sometimes overwhelming to find out who gives a better service. Remember, it is not all about money you need to invest. Ultimately, you would like to have a quality service from your web hosting company, whether free or paid.
Use this resource for your reference when choosing a web host or moving to a different host, etc. It's all about web hosting.