Author Archives: Kenny

About Kenny

Kenny is owner of webhostpark and has been working in hosting industry since 2006. We provide unbiased hosting reviews and release the latest promo news. Follow me on Google plus

Asia Web Hosting Hub

asia web hosting hub

Asia has the largest population and the most active economy in the world. Because of this, it brings lots of business opportunities to companies. When you plan to promote your service in that area, website is an essential part to show off your advantages. But where to host your website? A quality local web hosting service is absolutely the best choice. Today we're going to introduce two asia web hosting hubs – Singapore and Hongkong.

To select the perfect web hosting in asia district, the following points must be primarily considered: Network and server facilities, Support availability and language. Network performance and tech support would be the most specs for every hosting service. But things are little different in this area if you're from western countries. Till present, the best network centers are located in Japan, Taiwan, Hongkong and Singapore. These districts operate the main routings to international lines, but they work in completely different ways.

With no doubt, Tokyo has the best internet connections in east asia based their leading IT facilities, it's also one of the 13 root DNS centers. Everything seems to be perfect in this area, however the big weakness is lack of English support. Most of their hosting services are supported via Japanese. If you call in in English or other languages, not so many people can support you better. If you're English speaking customer and in need of native support for server service, Japan is not the perfect place. Taiwan provides nice English support but their service is more focused to domestic clients and most their websites are designed via traditional Chinese language.

Hongkong and Singapore are different. They both use English for official language and multiple other languages are being used too. They both are famous international economy and network centers with leading performance. However, their service is definitely idea choice for different areas.

Hongkong, absolutely the best place if your targeted website users are from China and other Eastern asia clients. For example if your website users will mainly come from China, you get various restrictions to get your site alive in that area because of the Chinese ICP license application. Hongkong is recognized the best alternative place to avoid such restriction with no network latency. Actually, the Hongkong network facilities have no real difference comparing to US, either from hardware installation and government laws over business.

Singapore, the international cross center of business and internet from south asia. Unlike India or other south asia countries, Singapore is featured for its robust economy and powerful network abilities. English is official support language and multiple other languages are used too. Population structure of Singapore is very similar to USA where citizens are from everywhere on the planet. If your targeted website users are from south asia districts, singapore is the best place to go. There you can expect the least network latency and best customer support.

Generally speaking, you need to pay little more for asia web hosting than US service for various reasons. However, Hongkong and Singapore are definitely the most idea hubs for the highest price value.

Best 5 WordPress Themes & Plugins for Photo Gallery

Is wordpress good choice for photo gallery site? Absolutely yes, wordpress is only limited by your imagination. For its light weight and powerful structure, you can customize wordpress to any kind website. Here we're going to introduce how to use wordpress to develop a professional photo gallery site in quick time.

A photo gallery site will always take lots of disk space to store your high quality photos, speed is also extremly high requirement to load your photos properly from anywhere in the world. Thus a fast and affordable wordpress hosting service is your primary task before uploading your photo gallery site. Based editoral experience over 10+ reputable wordpress hosting providers, webhostinghub(http://webhostinghub.com) is awarded the best photo gallery website hosting based server performance, plan features, price and tech support.

There're lots of practice on how to build a gallery site via wordpress. In this article we'll focus on the top wordpress themes and plugins that we can get easily for quick deployment. The top themes/plugins below base on usability, colors, layouts and real user ratings. Just take a look below and learn more about the products.

Top 5 WordPress Photo Gallery Themes

WPExplorer Photo Gallery Theme

Demo & Download | Price: FREE
One of the most responsive and free gallery themes, PHOTO is simple but perfect choice for photographer and art designers who like to maximum their images on website. The full-style post layout has no widget and footer so you can insert pictures/videos via most suitable size with easy navigation.

WPexplorer photo gallery

DeepFocus Photography WordPress Theme

Demo & Download | Price: $39
DeepFocus is developed by elegantthemes team – a professional wordpress theme development group. Just like its name, the theme is deeply designed and optimized for photo gallery purpose. You can turn your wordpress blog into a fully functional online photo gallery while still maintaining all of the features of a normal blog. Theme codes are secured with W3C validation for fast response. You have 5 color choice to fulfill your localization for 100% compatible with leading browsers. What really matters is you get professional tech support from Elegantthemes group and you have access to over 86 other themes downloads for single paying!

Deepfocus photo gallery

Stock Photography

Demo & Download | Price: $75
Stock Photography is a commercial wordpress theme which is feature for atmospheric and stylish design. The unique and arruping design makes it possible for any photo gallery site creation. This theme integrates with free Sell Media plugin and all of the extends, users can sell and license photos and sell prints online with ease. Being an ecommerce theme, it's fully supported by official team, you get video tutorials and customization guidance. You also have choice to purchase single theme license or pay a little more for all other commercial themes. Their people will release a new theme at least per month.

Stock photo gallery

Cardamon WP

Demo & Download | Price: $50
One of the most beatiful photo gallery themes for wordpress. Users get ultimate set of tools for theme customizations plus 10 gorgeous skins for different conditions. Cardamon WP is packed with custom widgets which will allow you to display different types content. Moreover, you can create as many widget areas as you like and display them on different pages. No coding skills required as everything is integrated to wordpress visual editor.

Cardamon photo gallery

Photojax Minimalist AJAX Photography Portfolio

Demo & Download | Price: $45
Another great commercial photo gallery theme by Themforest. It is a clean and minial, yet unique wordPress photography theme with lots of modern theme features. There're galleries, audio player and a minimal blog included for a great photography portfolio site. Another great feature is right click protection for your intellectual and photographic works, warning message is customizable.

Photojax photo gallery

Top 5 WordPress Photo Gallery Plugins

NextGEN Gallery
The ever greatest and most popular photo gallery plugin for wordpress. There're more than 8 million downloads generated till present. Nextgen gallery plugin provides all we need for photo gallery site. It's developed and maintained by www.nextgen-gallery.com and the development has always been active. View & Download

Cincopa
Cincopa is more than a simple photo gallery plugin. You can add photo albums, video galleries and music playlists with no programming skills needed. There're total of 44 skins with media file management tools to convert your site to media site by few clicks away. View & Download

Uber Media
Uber media is an upgrade of wordpress media manager with support for third party services such as Flickr, Instagram, 500px and almost all social media service. Great plugin if you like to save space under a shared server environment. View & Download

WP Flip Image Free
WP Flip Image Plugin is a great way to show your photo gallery and images in an elgant and smart way. With up to 8 languages support in admin area, you may use WP Flip Image in many ways: Photo gallery, Portfolio, Prudocts gallery, Social icons and many more! View & Download

Super Zoom Gallery
One of the greatest gallery plugins that support thumbnail and zoom capabilities. Shortcode available for simple use in blog posting. The great features provide the best solution for ecommerce shops where users can view thumbs and full size product pictures without navigating to another page. View & Download

How did Web hosts get bad reputation?

how is bad reputation hosting created

No one wants to work with a bad rated hosting service and no hosting company would like to build a bad reputation from the industry. However, many providers are indeed doing something to ruin their business in long run. Here we have generated a list of actions on how have a hosting company built a bad reputation.

More than capability features

Most servers are setup on single server basis with very limited hardware resource but everybody loves unlimited features from hosting plans like disk space, databases and email accounts and every features in hosting account. For most people they only need small resources to power a website, however there's always some exceptions you can not avoid. In case a customer used more than allocation, don't expect them to pay for extra. Instead, they will write bad comments to your company anywhere on the web so you'll loose lots of potential clients.

Outdated equipments

Web hosting business is actually full of competition based the amount of providers. In order to get customer orders, many providers are trying to reduce the costs. But they have to be profitable for their low price plans. So they purchase cheap outdated server equipments. The direct result is people will get slowness on website connection and as the number of customer accounts grow up, it will be super unstable. You might have stated what your service is most suitable for but no people will notice that, they just want to get what advertised on your site.

Oversea servers

Many hosting companies do not have their own hardware equipments. Especially from the start up, they just rent server space from data center or reseller providers. In order to save investment as more, cheap and oversea server service is their primary consideration. With such service, you just get remote access to server but do not know how the server is prepared under what condition. Because you have selected the cheap server to work with, you will not purchase premium support where you can call in 24×7. Unless you're 100% confident about server management, you'll be screamed heavily once you lost connection to server. Not to mention 99% uptime which is advertised on your site, the in time customer support can not be guaranteed.

Outsourced support

It's popular choice by many hosting companies to outsource their customer support to third party provider. They either do not have that much man power to be available 24×7 or simply don't pay enough attention to it. The problem is the third party support may not so familiar with your service structure, they can not provide some necessary technical answers thus you're in risk of loosing customers by doing that.

Another risk is you have to provide necessary admin rights to third party support people. In this way they will get access to your admin side and do some changes to customer accounts. You're not sure how those people being trained to handle such business because you never met them before. Giving them access to your customers' property means to put your business in risk.

If you have been doing above, don't complain people are posting negative comments to your service because all is the result by what you have done. Your customer just write honestly from their experience and they're the actual victim.

It's a hard job to maintain a good reputation. Nobody would like to ruin their own business but sometimes they're doing so and they may not even notice it. That's where problem starts. If you would like to maintain good reputation of your hosting business, review every day and think from customer side. Just think what service you need and what kind support you want to get from hosting company. In this way you will prevent most problems and customer will just thumb up with your service.

Media Temple Review

media temple review

You might have not heard media temple because cheap hosting service is advertised everywhere on the internet. However, you should not ignore this great name if you need enterprise web solutions. Media temple is simple one of the best choice.

Started in 1998, media temple has been updated with latest computing technologies. Based a customer-focused organisation, media temple provides scalable and reliable hosting solutions to individual websites, business applications as well as governmental sites. The company opened multiple communication channels to interact with clients in professional manner.

Media temple Hosting plans

Till present, media temple provides a full range hosting solutions including shared, VPS, enterprise and cloud server plans. The company also provides a powerful sitebuilder service where you have access to code behind. The spotlight is you have chance to try out 10 days for zero fees. You don't have to submit payment in case you do not like the service. ProCDN service is also provided to existing clients with affordable price. Unlike all other hosting server plans, the media temple servers are 100% cloud based for scalability and reliability.

  • Shared Hosting. It's called Grid shared web hosting there and extremely optimized for open source scripts like wordpress. The media temple grid servers are installed with newest server technologies like PHP 5.5, PageSpeed, FastCGI that can make your website pages load up to 6x faster from its official annoucement. Unlike traditional cpanel hosting service, the media temple tech group devided some essential services on different servers. Web server, mysql server and email servers are all separated for best performance.
  • VPS Hosting. Media temple provides multiple VPS server plans: Managed, Developer and Enterprise VPS. Each vps server includes free plesk control panel, a free billing application and resource management tools so you can use it for reseller hosting purpose. If you need more than guaranteed resources, you can upgrade to enterprise vps server where you have full access to entire virtualization environment for customization. 16 cores with up to 64GB RAM, it's actually much more powerful than a dedicated solution.
  • Cloud hosting. Dedicated cloud server is provided by media temple service. Unlike other cloud plans from the company, their Helix dedicated cloud is created from SSD drives which can be fully customized with your requirement. It's some kind expensive than many other cloud service($7,500/month) but you get 10 times more value than paying based their leading server configuration.

media temple hosting features

Media temple Server uptime

There's no doubt media temple has setup their servers by most powerful hardwares under cloud environment. The company operate total of two data centers on both east and west coast USA with a total of 171,200 sq. feet available for operations. A redundant, private Fiber connection is in place between their Virginia and California data centers. Low latency network and secure communication is guaranteed for business applications.

From existing customer feedbacks, media temple is hosting lots of .gov websites and received heavy attacks that might lead various problems to victims. However, the media temple level and quality of support has been doing their best to make sure all their service is up and healthy. Their people are truely working 24*7*365 so any urgent issue can be addressed in time and professionally.

Media temple Support

Besides all traditional support resource such as online chat and phone calls. The media temple staffs are very active in lots of social media sites and web forums like twitter, company blogs and facebook etc. They have multiple accounts to work with to handle customer requests at the earliest time. Their people are trying to reach their customers in as many channels as possible to make sure each single issue is concerned. 

Instead putting all support staff in a single office, the media temple support is located from multiple locations with different responsibilities. For instance their data center support is opening their eyes on every single server for performance and connectivity monitoring. They need to make sure all servers are well cooled down and properly secured to ensure your sensitive data is placed in safe place. Other traditional support like sales and basic tech support is mainly provided through business hours because over 99% questions can be answered through prepared video and FAQ knowledge base.

Media temple Promotion

Webhostpark has coperated with media temple. If you have interested with their hosting service and looking for some discount, their people provided us a promo code "Webhostpark" for 20% off initial payment. This promo offer can be applied to shared and VPS server plans but not valid on Virb and DV Enterprise. It's by far the highest promo code from media temple group. Don't miss out if you have interested with their hosting

Go to www.mediatemple.net for cloud hosting plans http://www.mediatemple.net

Justhost vs Hostgator

justhost vs hostgator

After both Justhost and Hostgator offered server upgrade options, they gained lots of new business. Since they both are managed by endurance group, which would be better choice to power your business? We have dealt with both justhost and hostgator service since 2008. In case you're considering either of their service, we have collected a list of in-depth comparison between justhost and hostgator.

Justhost Introduction

The brand justhost was just started in 2008 but quickly gained the most popularity among thousands of competitors. With only 2 years growth, justhost had powered more than 1 million websites. However, justhost later got acquired by endurance company for good price. After offered 5 years single shared hosting service, justhost launched vps and dedicated server plans in 2013.

Hostgator Introduction

One of the most well known and reputable web hosting brands. Since 2002, hostgator has grown from a bedroom to a world class operation center. From its official announcement, hostgator is currently serving over 9 million websites. Both windows and linux hosting solutions are provided by hostgator service with industry standards. Hostgator was merged to endurance in 2011.

Justhost vs Hostgator – Hosting Features

Both win. Justhost provides a single shared hosting solution with unlimited features for everything plus a free domain registration. Customers get standard linux hosting service via cpanel control panel. All available features are provided with the control panel software like one click installer, sitebuilder service and SEO package etc.

Hostgator provides similar features but with more options. With hostgator you can choose from multiple plans for different requirements. Unlike most other hosting providers, hostgator does not offer free domain name. You have to register by your own. However, hostgator wins for choice of windows platform. Not too many hosting providers offer windows option on the market. Over 90% hosting service is linux based for costive competition. However, there're indeed great amount of requests for windows server service. The hostgator affordable and rich feature windows hosting plans are well rated by most existing clients.

justhost vps service

Justhost vs Hostgator – Upgrade opportunity

Justhost win. The justhost servers are all cloud technologies based with guaranteed resource. The justhost vps/dedicated servers are provided the same as bluehost with same hardware/software specifications, because their servers are all placed in the same data center space. They provide half price for the first month service.

Hostgator provides multiple upgrade options for VPS and dedicated server. You can select server specifications according to your requirements. But hostgator servers are currently provided on traditional single server technologies which means all resources are limited by host server. What really make it outstanding is every server will come with lots of free bonus for example smartermail service, smarter track, plesk sitebuilder wizard with more than 1000 templates. Such bonus is not available from any other server providers.

Justhost vs Hostgator – Server Uptime

Both win. There was difference few months before. However there's no real difference now because both companies have migrated their servers to the same data center space. New data center space is exactly the one setup by bluehost group in Utah. Endurance seems would like to migrate all their cpanel service to this data center and make full use of the available resources. Even after migrated justhost and hostgator there, still at least 1/4 free space left because the huge size.

From continous monitoring over their server/network statistics, no real downtime in the past 2 months. Just temporary slowness during midnight backup periods. Comparing to the old times in old data center space, the server uptime is definitely improved a lot.

Justhost vs Hostgator – Support Availability

Both win. Although both brands are belong to endurance, they're currently supported by different support teams. Justhost support people are partially generated from old company and hostgator is still supported by old HG team at the moment. All their tech people are smart genius with years experience. They're active in multiple support resources such as company blog/forum, phone and chat support etc. Their people are working around the clock so you can always pick up a professional from online contact channels.

Justhost vs Hostgator – Price

Justhost wins. Either for shared or vps/dedicated server plans, justhost provides much better price. At the moment, the justhost shared hosting plan just costs $2.25/mo and you can still apply some coupon codes for further discounts. For vps and dedicated service people can get half discount for first month service. VPS server just starts with $29.99/mo with 2GB RAM and 30GB guaranteed resource, you also get a free domain name and cpanel control panel. You don't get such advantage from hostgator. The hostgator single domain hosting plan starts with $3.96/mo with limited resources. As about VPS server, you need to pay twice amount in order to get similar server features from justhost service.

justhost cheap hosting

Conclusion

If you need to take windows server advantages, hostgator will serve you better because justhost does not offer this service yet. But if you want to save more for simple website hosting purpose, justhost is absolutely the right choice. Only $2.25/mo you will get free domain name unlimited website hosting opportunity, you don't get such advantages from hostgator.

Visit justhost now for server plan details http://www.justhost.com

Domain Name FAQs

domain name faq

Domain name is your most valuable web property after your website goes online. It's crucial to know about some knowledges for it so you can manage it professionally and keep it in safe place. Based our editorial experience with different registrars, we have gathered following domain name FAQs from every side.

What's domain and sub domain?

A wiki page provides detailed explanation. But in short, domain name is an address we use to access the internet. It's composed by 3 parts: Prefix, name and Tld. For example "www.name.com". Sub domain is created under top level domain such as "sub.name.com", the term "sub" can be anything. The purpose of sub domain is to create different sites without having to register multiple top level domain names.

What's domain certificate?

Domain certificate is to approve you have ownership with your domain. It's provided by your current registrar, you have to contact your domain support on how to get it.

What's DNS Server?

DNS is abbreviation of "Domain Name System". A DNS server can be understood the sub-station between website users and your web server. DNS server simply tells where the targeted location is when you send requests from your domain. Generally, a domain name DNS records include: A record, MX record, SPF record and TXT record.

What's DNS propagation?

DNS propagation is a process after you made any modification to DNS server records. Once there's any change for DNS server or records, it will take some time to reflect the changes. Normally it will take up to 72 hours for DNS server change and about 30 minutes for DNS records change.

What's Domain transfer?

It means to transfer your domain registration from one company to another. The procedures are followed by this:

Unlock domain from existing registrar -> Get authorization code -> Submit transfer request from new registrar -> Confirm the transfer. The entire process takes up to 7 days depends the actual situation.

Note: You can not transfer a domain within the first 60 days after registration. Domain transfer is free of charge but you will need to renew one year from new registrar end as normal operation. If your domain is going to expire within a month, it's suggested renew it before you make the tranfer.

What's the difference between domain transfer and DNS transfer?

They're completely two different things. Domain transfer means to transfer registration company while DNS transfer means to change your domain DNS server to hosting provider's setting.

What's domain hijack?

Domain hijack is also called DNS hijack. The concept is to attack DNS server or redirect your domain DNS to somewhere else so your website can't be browsed. To avoid domain hijack, you need a leading domain registration service and DNS provider, you also need to configure necessary security setup with the domain service.

What does different domain status mean?

Once your domain is registered, the whois search will return different status. Here's a list of status with explanation

  • inactive – domain is not configured yet, such as no DNS server or not hosted etc.
  • clientDeleteProhibited – you can not delete the domain by yourself
  • serverDeleteProhibited – can not be deleted on server end
  • clientUpdateProhibited – you can not update the domain
  • serverUpdateProhibited – server end update is not allowed
  • clientTransferProhibited – you can not transfer out domain
  • serverTransferProhibited – server end transfer out is not allowed.
  • clientRenewProhibited – you can not renew
  • serverRenewProhibited – server end renew is not allowed
  • pendingDelete – domain registration is pending deletion
  • pendingTransfer – domain is pending transfer to new registrar
  • pendingUpdate – domain is pending update
  • clientHold – domain is hold by registrar, no update is allowed.
  • serverHold – domain is locked on server end
  • pendingVerification – domain registration is pending verification
  • RedemptionPeriod – pending redemption after expiration date, max 30 days available
  • RendingRestore – domain will be available for registration again, max 7 days

What's domain parking?

Domain parking is a service that allows you to show up a page without hosting service. It's often provided by domain registrar directly. It's popularly used by people who found a great domain but just want to resell it with good price.

How do I know if my domain is working properly?

You just need to verify this by ping. Open a dos prompt on your computer and type "ping yourdomain.com". If your domain is working properly, it should reply with your web server IP address. If it returns "request time out" then most probably your web server is down. If it returns wrong IP numbers, means your domain is not propagated yet, you need to wait longer time for DNS propagation.