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

Top 5 Free Website Platforms

top 5 free website platforms

Sometimes you just need a simple page for personal profile purpose. Because of the low requirement you don't have to research a lot for a high performance web hosting service. Instead, you can make full use of the available free website platforms. You will get a bunch list of such service from a simple google search. But which will be the best choice? We compiled a list of the top 5 free website platforms based editorial experience and user ratings from below. Take a look and select the best one that suit your needs.

NO.1 Blogger.com

Blogger(www.blogger.com) is officially operated by google group. It's firstly crated by Pyra Labs group in 1999 and merged into google in 2003. Blogger is one of the very first free blog platforms with the most popularity. From it's official report, the highest registration rate is over 1 million within one month. Till present, blogger is still the largest blog platform. You can use blogger for simple website creation, blog posting. It comes with a very powerful visual editor where you can make instant changes to your site without dealing with code behind. Blogger also has a great template source to help with your website customization. Just join with your google account!

blogger.com

NO.2 WordPress.com

Wordpress(www.wordpress.com) is the most popular blog platform that's managed by wordpress official team. Unlike all other website system, most core functions are provided from admin panel to help you create a powerful website. Some critical functinos like url structure, widgets, traffic analysis are all included as default. You can also define the website address whenever you like to change. In case you need to create multiple sites for different purpose, you can manage them all from the same admin side but don't have to sign up each site using different personal details. In case you would like to apply your own domain name, just register it directly in the backend then you can start your own site!

wordpress.com

NO.3 Weebly.com

Weebly(www.weebly.com) is website builder service provider where you can drag/drop modules to the design panel for website creation. It provides both free and paid plans with different features. The free plan provides people basic functions for simple website creation. Unlike any other sitebuilder service that comes with lots of templates, you need to define most design by yourself from weebly panel such as page navigation, type of content etc. The big advantage of weebly sitebuilder is its 100% mobile device compatibility and simple usage. Once the template is selected, you just use the drag/drop modules for customization.

weebly.com

NO.4 Wix.com

Wix(www.wix.com) is also a type of sitebuilder service with both free and paid plans. The main difference is if you want to show their ads on your website. Paid plans also offer free domain registration and additional offers based the plan you choose. The wix sitebuilder service provides a bunch of templates in different categories. Just pick up the best one with you needs and start the building! However, you should note many templates are commercial version. You need to pay for such templates in case you need it. The wix sitebuilder is html5 based and all your data will be stored in its cloud storage for maximum accessability.

wix.com

NO.5 Tumblr.com

Tumblr(www.tumblr.com) was opened in 2007 and currently owned by Yahoo! group. It's different from any existing blog platform, it's a featured light blogging site with well organization for content, social media and personality. Tumblr merged the advantages of traditional blog and social media site like facebook and twitter. You can follow and like other bloggers and articles by mouse clicking. Tumblr is 100% free to join and pretty easy to create your own website by following its guidance.

tumblr.com

As we see, it's quite easy to launch your own website without paying. Especially when you have pretty low requirement for simple website creation, you can make full use of above free platforms and they will keep it free forever!

However, please note all your submited data on these free platforms can not be downloaded to your local computer. Means you can not transfer the website to anywhere else. If you got a paid hosting some day for better experience, you will have to start over again. So you need to evaluate if you really need the free service.

One day, you found you have added too many stuff to your site and need more reliable service to deal with, you might have to work days to move it over. If you need to go to paid hosting service in short periods, we highly suggest check out the best budget hosting service from ipage(www.ipage.com). Only $1.99/mo you can take full advantage of web hosting for any website purpose.

Cloud Desktop vs Desktop Cloud

cloud desktop and desktop cloud comparison

In cloud computing industry, there're two popular and confusing terms called desktop cloud and cloud desktop. More and more cloud service providers announce to provide support for both. But what would be their relationship and difference? How will we benefit from such service? We'll compare the two services side by side in this article and find out which service you will need.

Cloud Desktop

In short, it's a computing technology that allows users be able to connect to cloud service via desktop computer. All services/data are stored in remote cloud storage for central management. In this way company be able to reduce costs on equipments and maintenance.

Desktop Cloud

It's also a kind of computing technologies that's firstly announced by Intel group. The purpose of desktop cloud is to simplify the management over multiple computers. Via desktop cloud you can manage multiple desktops from the same window without leaving your computer. The modern desktop cloud is completely created from data center for enterprise deployment.

As we see, they are both cloud based services. Cloud desktop is more about a desktop management for cloud services and desktop cloud is more about desktop management over multiple virtual machines from cloud. Let's see their respective advantages side by side

Cloud desktop advantages

Data security
All data is stored in cloud platform, local users do not have have direct access to copy and take away. Each users can be assigned different permissions in using the service for best protection.

Easy maintenance
Because all applications and data are stored in cloud environment, technicians be able to maintain all tasks centrally like installation, virus scanning, updating and backup etc. They no longer need to work on each independent computers and repeat the same work again and again.

Energy Saving
All applications are running on cloud terminals, we just need a displayer and connector to cloud engine. No host computer needed at all. This will reduce the power consumption up to 80%.

Fast deployment
When you need to give new user access, he just needs a terminal unit, keyboard and mouse to work with. You don't have to spend hours and start from cratch in preparing a working computer.

Low replacement frequncy
You might need a new computer after 3-4 years because hardware limits. However, there's almost no limits for cloud because you just need to add new devices and all old ones are still working fine. In general, the life cycle of cloud engine is 8-10 years.

Convenience
You can connect to cloud desktop by most mobile devices like iPad, smart phones. As long as you're able to connect to internet you can use cloud desktop.

cloud desktop service

Desktop Cloud advantages

Central desktop management
IT professionals be able to complete all maintenance work from data center. Most tasks can be done automatically like software deployment/update, security updates etc. It greatly reduced human operation on independent devices.

Remotely hosted data
All data is stored in remote cloud devices, it is just a displayer from end user side. All changes are stored on remotely device not local so data security is mostly guaranteed.

Multi-desktops from one window
You can switch to different desktops easily from an explorer interface. It's extremely helpful when you need to handle different tasks on different system. It will reduce time and improve work efficiency.

Fast recovery
All desktop cloud data is centrally stored in data center with screenshot backup. When there's a disaster, it can be recovered fastly and ensure your business abilities.

Till present, most cloud service providers be able to offer cloud desktop only, the desktop cloud is still some kind new and mainly provided by IBM. You can find more about this service on this IBM business desktop cloud page.

Being an enterprise solution, desktop cloud is expensive to deal with. Unless you're running a big group and has pretty high requirement to data security and like to reduce investment as more as possible for large deployment, you don't have to consider this service. On the other hand, cloud desktop is pretty flexible for single user service. You can sign up easily from cloud service providers. You don't need to pay server renting fees and software license etc. You just need to purchase the exact service you needed in the cloud and you will get desktop connection to it.

Best Merchant Account Service & Hosting

Merchant account service and hosting

To accept payment online safe and convenient is critical for your business. However, it's not easy to find a reliable and affordable gateway solution. Most of the time you have to pay a lot for merchant account setup and high rate transaction fees. No matter if you're operating a small or big online business, a powerful and affordable merchant account service is needed for better success. Today we'll check out one the best merchant account solutions "AcceptSafe" and find how it will fulfill your needs.

In order to accept online payment, you need both merchant account and payment gateways like paypal, authorize.net, 2checkout, google checkout etc. However, most providers offer gateways and merchant accounts independently and you have to sign up from different service centers. Paypal(www.paypal.com) probably has provided one step solution in right direction. However you have to accept high rate transaction fees(3% per transaction). When you withdraw from paypal, there'll be additional fees involved. With actual user experience, paypal protects buyers better than sellers and you can run into account suspension easily. Paypal can help with fast payment integration to your website but high rate fees will be generated.

What if we're running a starter business and few transactions will be generated per day? Acceptsafe(www.acceptsafe.com) would be the perfect solution. It might be some kind new but already favored by thousands of ecommerce website owners for it's ease of use, low rate fees and high performance. No matter what you are going to sell on web store, you will receive payment securely and fastly. Some spotlights of acceptsafe include

acceptsafe merchant account service

Fast merchant account approval
An acceptsafe representative will help with your merchant account setup by professional operation, you just need to answer a few questions then your merchant account service is ready! You don't have to wait days or weeks like from other providers. The sooner you get the store running, the more business opportunities will be generated.

No setup costs
It's 100% free to get started with acceptsafe. You don't need to pay anything in advance and no requirements to your transactions amount. What you need to pay is $19.99 monthly fee. This price includes merchant account service and payment gateway service which is provided by acceptsafe.

Faster and more secure
Once payment is submited on your website, money will be quickly placed through direct deposit to your bank account. Within 1-2 days it's all yours! The process is completely handled by secure gateway from behind. You and customers' sensitive data is well preotected from hacking. You can accept various credit cards including visa, american express, discover and mastercard etc.

Easy integration
Acceptsafe is compatible with all leading ecommerce platforms like oscommerce, magento and opencart etc. You can add it to your site by plugins or simply uploading the project to your code behind if you have programmed the site by yourself. No more skills/efforts required in using this service.

Mobile device compatible
Acceptsafe is 100% mobile compatible where you can deploy/use the service from all over the world. After your store is setup, you can manage it anywhere with no restriction.

Till present, acceptsafe is being recommended by various service providers in multiple industry fields like web hosting, b2c platforms and personal retailers because of its fantastic performance and affordable cost. However, to operate your ecommerce store with acceptsafe for best success, there're multiple essential tips to follow up

Tips 1. Find the best Web hosting provider

Your website is your business, you never wish it to be stuck when someone is ordering your products. You will need a fast and reliable hosting providers to power your business site and ensure the best avilability. Arvixe(www.arvixe.com) is picked up for the best ecommerce hosting provider by editorial experience. Being the golden sponsor of leading ecommerce solutions, arvixe deeply optimized their hosting servers to work with different ecommerce website scripts. With their service you will receive free domain name for life and unlimited mysql database. FREE ssl will be included too for business class plan. If you apply this arvixe coupon "Clue30" you can receive 30% discount so personal class plan price will be decreased to $2.8/mo. You can not find better offer from anywhere else.

arvixe ecommerce hosting

Tips 2. Get a secure and ease to use ecommerce platform

Thousands of ecommerce scripts can be found based your different requirements. But you can't test one by one in order to find the most suitable package. We highly recommend open cart script if you're more friendly to php. Opencart comes for light weight and rich feature plugins to help with customization in quick time. The simple and powerful admin navigation will guide you step by step on how to complete your store setup. If you're more .net friendly, nopcommerce would be perfect choice today. Nopcommerce is actually the only best rated .net open source shopping cart script. It's designed using up to date programming skills and improved by thousands of online communities. If you need a safe and powerful .net solution for your ecommerce cart, nopcommerce is the solely best choice.

Tips 3. Keep in touch with Acceptsafe support

Every product/service needs customer support. Especially for such merchant account service. It's the best to communicate with support team in how to use it in best practice. Don't make judgement in short time by yourself, a further communication will help reduce potential issues and make sure your can always accept payment online securely and efficiently.

Why DELL Server for Hosting?

why dell server for web hosting

DELL, a leading brand in computer industry. DELL server has been standard choice by over half web hosting providers. Most companies actually highlight the point to gain better business. So why dell server is important to hosting industry? How does it help service providers to reach success? Let's read below.

On the server market, there're 3 most well known brands, IBM, DELL and HP. IBM is absolutely the best server platform for its historical performance and hardware configurations. IBM works closely with state of the art technologies to provide the highest server solutions. If you're providing enterprise solutions to clients, IBM server will give you the best user experience and performance. Well, with the high performance server, it also comes with pretty high price. IBM is the best rated server from side by side hardware configuration but also has the highest price.

HP & DELL servers are actually no much difference from hardware specifications and HP actually provides better price. For small business that has tight budget, HP is pretty good choice. However, you can't expect 24×7 tech support all the time with the low price. Means after their warranty period you might have to responsible for any problem by yourself.

While you need to spend a lot to use IBM and can't bear with less support for HP product, DELL will give you fresh breath among all competitors. Up to 5 years' 24×7 onsite support and no question asked replacement. That's the DELL advantage you can not find anywhere else. With reasonable cost and high performance, you simply get the best support to keep your business in safe hands. Just think some day your server crashed but there're lots of sensitive data with frequent online accessing requirement. What should you do? Fixing problems from scratch? Absolutely not the best solution unless you understand where the exact problem is.

dell server

DELL server is best choice for web hosting by following advantages

High performance. DELL server has the cutting edge performance by using the best hardware production. They provide multiple server solutions including tower and blade types that you can install easily from data center space. All servers come with high scalability where you can add/remove additional server resources on the fly. That's how hosting providers be able to offer guaranteed performance on DELL.

Ease of deployment. The operation of DELL server has no more difference than personal computer. You can configure DISK RAID, Cluster and server farm easily using the provided tools when purchasing the server. DELL server has lots of optimization and security tools from default installation so you don't have to deal with lots of third party solutions for production server purpose.

Onsite tech support. Support wins everything in this modern society, support is also the main difference for DELL comparing to all their competitors. The DELL group setup thousands of support centers on each country where you can call for 24×7. Their genius will fly to your place with most possible fast speed. In case you're experiencing hardware failure, their support service can reduce the downtime in most degrees.

Less cost. Web hosting is a mature business with lots of competition. Every hosting provider is trying to offer lower price than ever but still remain the same performance, thus a reliable and low cost server solution is important in their plans. DELL is 100% designed to meet up this chanllenging requirement and liked by over half hosting providers. For newly created hosting brands, DELL server is a MUST for reliable and high performance server for less cost.

From DELL group official report and idc market sharing charts, DELL server got the best selling in Q1 2013 with about 14% increase comparing to the last year. DELL is also the only server provider who has increased its sales ratio among all providers.

Best DELL Server Hosting Provider

DELL servers are popularly used by many hosting providers, but not every company be able offer the guaranteed service as advertised. Many cheap hosting plans announced to have DELL powered but they either build a large server then host thousands of customer accounts or simply rent a VPS server to start their business. Searching out a reputable and reliable web hosting plan is your primary task for future success. After reviewed more than 50+ popular DELL server hosting brands with editorial experience, we highly recommend from the top 3 hosting below

www.arvixe.com
  • 100% dell server
  • affordable hosting plan
  • windows/linux available
  • 99% uptime guaranteed!
$4/mo
webhostinghub.com
  • all servers dell powered
  • extremely fast loading speed
  • code level website protection
  • 90 days full money back
$3.99/mo
inmotionghosting.com
  • max speed zone enabled
  • no overselling dell server
  • business choice
  • 90 days full refund guaranteed
$5.95/mo

Can You Benefit From HostingCon?

hostingcon pros and cons

Hostingcon is held each year in north American and being recognized the most important conference in hosting industry. All major web hosting providers, server and technologies providers will join it to show up their services and discuss some major events of the year. Because it's an exhibition, everybody can visit and meet your potential service providers in real person. But how does the hostingcon help individual users? This article tells the real use of this conference by comparing both pros and cons.

Pros of HostingCon

Meet Hosting Providers in Real Person

Because of the good advertising by operation teams. Most major web hosting companies will attend the conference. Especially for those web hosts located in North American, they will not miss the opportunity to show up their service for better business. If you like to discuss with your hosting company support team more efficiently, you can meet them in real person from the exhibition. Especially when you got a complex question or enquiry to their service, hostingcon is the best place.

Newest Technologies/Service exhibition

Absolutely, every exhibitor will bring their newest technology and service plans to the conference. If you're providing IT services to clients, you can check out the newest available solutions for better service offers. Also, by introducing the newest technologies to your service, you will win better success than your competitors.

Compare Different Providers in Reality

Looking for the most suitable hosting solution but not sure how to choose by online research? Congratulations! Hostingcon will give you chance to compare different providers in real world. You don't have to read how people talking about, you can check with their team directly and decide the best choice after compared a bunch of providers. It's extremely helpful when you have special requirements to hosting services, hostingcon will get most providers there for you so you can pick up the perfect choice.

Get the Best Deal by offsite promo

Promotion is a MUST for every exhibitors during the 3 days exhibition. You might have found various promo from online search, but you will find it's hard to find such high rates on the exhibition. If you're going to invest on web hosting in short time, you should not miss the great opportunity for big saving.

Cons of HostingCon

We read the big advantages of hostingcon from above. But what would be the cons regardless how it's being promoted? Well, I have to say, the hostingcon is not an traditional exhibition like foods or electric affairs. Hostingcon is specialized in web hosting industry that has less cross over other fields. So generally it doesn't come with large scale comparing to other exhibitions. Basically, you can find the following weak points especially from personal webmaster view.

Mainly joined by hosting providers

The hostingcon is held yearly but it's mainly attended by major hosting groups and equipments providers. It's more like a group meeting among different providers. Also, since it's held in American, for people from Europe or Asia areas, most of them do not have the chance to get involved. Also, if you're personal website users, you would not be interested with this affair. For what reason you are encouraged to attend? Because you want to learn about the leading technologies or super discounts? I think there's no need for personal hosting users. You just want to get your simple website working but don't care who what kind of technique being used on the server.

IT groups will benefit Mostly

Because of the above explanation, only IT groups will benefit more from the conference because they need to work closely with various providers like hardware/software vendors and security solutions. They keep their eyes on each updates of the industry. Reliability and security is mostly needed for their service thus they always attend lots of industry conference then apply the newest solutions to their networks.

Conclusion

Hostingcon is great if you're running an IT group or have big requirements to hosting service. You will see the newest technologies and equipments to improve your service. Most of the time you just do online communication to upstream vendors, but you can meet most of them in real person in the exhibition. But you will not benefit much if you just need a simple web hosting plan to power your blog or forum sites.

Anyhow, being the most important conference in hosting industry, hostingcon will bring us the newest development results. Hosting providers will learn on how to improve themselves after compared to the strongest competitors. So finally, their clients will receive better service maybe with better price. Hostingcon is actually encouraging all providers to improve their products for more healthy

Sitebuilder or CMS

sitebuilder or cms software for website creation

Website creation is not dedicated to programmers any more because of the technology fast improvements. You have various options to get your website live in short time. Instead of seeking for web development company to program your business site, you can make use lots of existing solutions like the drag and drop sitebuilder wizard or powerful cms softwares like wordpress. Should you use sitebuilder service or install cms software to start with? This article compares the two solutions side by side and help with your final choice.

About Sitebuilder Wizard

Sitebuilder wizard is one of the earliest solutions to help people launch website in quick time. Most sitebuilder softwares are setup by step by step guidance where you can choose website templates, create pages and final publishment. You don't need programming skills in order to use this solution, each element is editable so you can make the layout/navigation etc as you like. A leading sitebuilder solution comes with hundreds of templates to choose from and you can always find a design that works with your needs. Some popular sitebuilder service like plesk sitebuilder and RV sitebuilder are all good choice.

About CMS Software

CMS(content management system) is a complete website creation platform. You will get all source codes and database scripts after installation. Because you have full access to each code behind, you can fully customize it based your real needs. Many web development companies nowadays make use of the leading cms solutions like joomla & drupal because of the advanced code structure.

Sitebuilder vs CMS – Ease of use

Sitebuilder wins for start users based its simple design and straight guidance. You don't have to touch a single code from behind but just navigate through a powerful GUI interface. The entire process is just like to fill out a form then you can publish to get a complete website.

On the other hand, you need to get some basic knowleges about database and html etc in order to use a cms software in right direction. Sometimes you also need to search solutions from official communities or hosting support in using it. Although all cms vendors are trying to make their products easier to use, you still have to deal with lots of technical stuff because of various modules/plugins in the gallary.

Sitebuilder vs CMS – Scalability

CMS wins for this round. For sitebuilder you have to edit everything from the sitebuilder wizard account and you have to publish the entire website again for a single change. Once there's a problem with the software or your internet connection, the publishing will fail and your website might be destroyed. Also, sitebuilder is featured for simple only. If you would like to add some dynamic contents like a blog or forum etc, it's either impossible or it will slow down your site a lot. Because most sitebuilder does not include a database. If it does, it's mostly ms access but not other engines. Ms access database is definitely not suitable for blog/forum for the modern requirements.

But all cms softwares are dynamic languages based with either mysql or sql server database powered behind. No matter if you want to edit existing pages or add new modules to your site, you can do it easily from admin panel without having to publish the entire site. The leading cms solutions like joomla and wordpress are all modulbe/plugin based where you can make customization on the fly.

Sitebuilder vs CMS – Web Server Requirements

Most web pages published by sitebuilder softwares are plaint html that has almost no requirements for hosting servers because you don't need a web server at all to open it. What you really need is a reliable hosting servers to ensure your website is always online.

CMS is different, they're either php/mysql based or .net/sql server based. You will need different server technologies to host your website. You might have been familiar with various cms platforms and be able to create a professional site with your skills. But most of the time you have to research a lot in order to get the right hosting provider.

Conclusion

Sitebuilder is great solution if you just need to create a simple enterprise website and don't plan to edit it frequently. But if you need a dynamic website with frequent updates, cms is perfect choice. You don't have to be a programmer in order to use the platform but just need basic html and database skills. When you have to completely rely on hosting provider for sitebuilder service, you have full control over cms system. You can migrate your cms site easily to other servers but you can't migrate the sitebuilder site sometimes because many sitebuilder service will not give your the actual files as everything is central managed in their system.