Always Review A Hosting Companies Terms Of Service
March 30, 2008
Before you sign up with any web host you need to take a very close look at the TOS; this is short for ?Terms of service?. The TOS should not be overlooked, a lot of hosting customers simply check the ?I agree? box and continue without even reading the terms, and this can cause a lot of headaches in the long run.
TOS aren’t your typical user agreement that you will see when installing software applications. Hosting TOS contain very important information about what you can, and can’t do with your new web hosting account.
Some hosts may have a really good deal, great price, great disk space and bandwidth but if you look closely at the TOS you may find little get out clauses such as:
“Any customer using more than x% of system resources will have their hosting account terminated?
So even though the host is offering you a massive amount of disk space and bandwidth, if you get anywhere close to the limit you will often find that your account has been suspended. Why has it been suspended?
Because you broke the Terms Of Service!!
This is just one example of how not reading through the TOS can come back and bite you in the butt, there are many other policies that some hosts will include in the TOS. These include CPU usage limits, not being allowed to host downloadable files (.zip, .mp3, .pdf) and so on.
It is hugely important that you always review the hosting accounts Terms Of Service before you sign up with anyone.
Dan Thompson is a veteran website designer and has used numerous webhosts in his time. Dan specialises in writing web host reviews, his latest article is a Hostmonster Review .
You can view Dan’s latest web hosting review at http://www.hostmonster-the-review.com
Hosting A Website- What Not To Do
March 28, 2008
By the words web hosting, we usually understand putting up all the necessary ingredients of a website into the space provided by a web server for everyone to view it in a composite form. And often it has been noticed a good deal turning bad due to a few, petty mistakes that people do while hosting there own websites, dooming all the prospects that the website could have delivered. Not that those things are irreversible, but since prevention is better than cure and it can save a lot of time (read money), we think it is better for anyone to gather certain information before embarking upon a certain web hosting plan.
General Introduction:
Often people tend to settle for a web hosting plan that’s either the cheapest, or the one with the most features including certain options that one may not require. Most of the web hosting plan providers put together a bundle of basic web hosting options with a variety of web services like email, newsletters, databases etc and combine them into packages. This costs more money and may make the ones with a stringent budget face further difficulties. To keep safe, it is always recommended to double check the options in a web hosting plan before actually paying for it.
What should not be done while hosting a website:
- Upgradations being one of the prime aspects of any web hosting plan, it is also advised not to go for a provider who seconds the idea of upgrading a package. The provider who doesn’t allow a cancellation of the package or doesn’t refund is to be avoided as well.
- It is not advised to host the website and register the domain name all by self; it is the work of the web-site plan provider.
- A person must not go for a web hosting plan just because it includes everything.
- Worrying about Linux or Microsoft windows server in the hosting service plans is immaterial; it doesn’t normally make a difference.
Find more about Web Hosting on http://www.LeanderNet.com/Web_hosting/Web_hosting.php . More useful content on LeanderNet - http://www.LeanderNet.com
Web Hosting Reviews - Can You Trust Them?
March 14, 2008
The market is filled with web hosting services providers of all shapes and sizes. In this jungle of hosting companies, how do you make a good choice? Should you trust the sites offering web hosting reviews?
Imagine doing a search on Google for “web hosting company”, and coming up with around 1,700,000 hits! How can you possibly find the best web hosting plan for your needs among all those? You may look at the prices, thinking: “I will get a good deal by looking for the cheapest web hosting plan”.
Well, not a good idea IMHO. Because of the fierce competition between providers of web hosting services, they often try to cut costs by cutting down on support, and also by vastly overselling hardware and bandwidth resources. The result: poor support and poor reliability. Simply put: your website goes down, and nobody listens to you when you try to tell your hosting company about it.
What you want and need is not a cheap web hosting plan, but a good web hosting plan that fits your budget. Having realized this, you start looking around for advice on good web hosting. Now, chances are you will then stumble upon some web hosting review site, which is happy to tell you that xyz.com is the very best web hosting provider in the world! Fine, you think, now my problem is solved thanks to that piece of valuable information.
Wrong again - most likely. The truth is, that many web hosting companies pay very generous commissions to those who refer new customers to them. It then becomes very tempting to set up a “web hosting reviews” website which is actually nothing but a billboard for the best-paying web hosting services providers, with no regard for their actual merits. And so it goes. I have personally looked over about a hundred of those web hosting reviews’ sites, and in most cases they are just that - billboards. Often, they strongly recommend web hosting companies that are actually known to have a very poor customer reputation. Thus, they are really spreading misinformation and confusion instead of offering good advice.
The only reliable way of telling if a web hosting company is worth doing business with, is to see what their customers are saying about it. Such customer posts can be found here and there on various web sites, but you have to know where to look. A few of those web hosting reviews’ sites does actually collect and post such customer opinions; and you can also find authentic posts by searching on large web hosting forums such as WebHostingTalk.
Needless to say, you should NOT bother with the “customer opinions” posted by the web hosting companies themselves on their own sites. Often, those “reviews” are fabricated, or simply copied from somewhere else.
About the Author
I am a researcher, an artist, and a web developer. On my website, http://www.TheHostingFinder.com , I offer some information on the good type of web hosts - the kind that has a majority of happy and satisfied customers. I hope this may prove helpful to some people.
Web Hosting - Look Before You Leap
March 7, 2008
Website hosting usually involves basically renting space on a server or another computer set up to publish the content of your website onto, providing fast and safe methods for your customers to retrieve the information from, for viewing on their computers. The numbers of available packages are staggering, and frankly overwhelming to try to sort through for the best choice. Prepare yourself for creative applications of the word free, a lot of size-comparisons about bandwidth, hard drive space, page hits, etc. While the hosting specs definitely should matter, most basic hosting plans are going to be enough to support any basic website. The more imminent concern with choosing your host should be the fact that youre going to entrust them a lot more than you may realize up front. Of course, your information is important. But hey, you WANT people to see it, right? Then, theres your customers information. And then theres little things like the fact that small business servers have opened up such a gaping security threat for user bad guys (hackers, terrorists, etc.) to relay anonymously across hundreds of these small business hosting servers. This is a real threat developing at an epidemic measure. Further information can be seen at The United States Cyber Emergency Response Teams site. Then, of course, theres those other nagging issues like viruses, worms, SPAM, and online casinos to contend with, now layered with the new wave of intelligent spy and adware ALL of these things run a pretty solid DEFINITE likelihood of interacting with your server. The integrity of whatever company you choose for your hosting services may easily be the determining factor of whether you CAN stay online. Check these guys out before getting stuck with a company that turns out to be the worlds largest distributor of male enhancement products targeting the valued customer list you unknowingly provided them. Do they just pass you on to another actual hosting company while they monitor your web traffic? What safeguards have they put in place to protect YOU?
Chairman, GeorgiaNewBusinessAssociation.com; Co-Founder, SouthernSites.net
