Green Hosting Overview

Green hosting is also called Eco-friendly hosting. While the traditional web hosting are consuming a lot of electricity and polute the atmosphere badly, green hosting is aimed at the environment protection. From either power supply and hosting equipment such as datacenter layouts or server optimizition, green hosting is trying to drop less waste to the earth and protect our environment.

TOP Green Hosting Providers

In order to get customers, more and more hosting companies announced to be green but actually not all of them be able to get the "green" tag. There're a lot of things a hosting company must do in order to be green, it's definitely not affordable for small companies. If you're looking for decent green hosting service, you must look for those who have been serving thousands of clients.

Here we're going to make a comparison for some featured green hosting providers and find out who's the best green hosting provider.

Greengeeks – Greengeeks is no doubt the leading brand for green hosting service. Their datacenter is one of the greenest in the world. Except for their green hosting plan, their people will also plant a tree for each customer to support the environment directly. They put the green idea into actual action is the most outstanding feature comparing to all other green hosting companies.

Greengeeks team invests a lot in order to ensure their 300% green guarantee. However, they still offer very affordable hosting solutions to people who like to share green lights. Hosting service just starts at $4.95/mo with unlimited for most essential features such as hosted domain names, mysql databases, email accounts etc.

Visit http://www.greengeeks.com for green hosting details!

Hostgator – Hostgator is well known hosting provider and recommended by most webmasters for outstanding customer service. Hostgator hosting plan has no much difference comparing to many companies, they simply got a nice network backbone and offer good honest services to clients, this made hostgator grows mad fast. Known as the industry leader, hostgator is certified green hosting provider and actually the biggest service provider.

Ready to deal with Hostgator hosting plan? Make sure to claim the latest hostgator coupon for 25% discount!

Fatcow – Fatcow is more and more famous among green hosting competition, by offerring super stable hosting service and affordable hosting plan, it's recommended by thousands of people on the web. If you're looking for the lowest price hosting plan with outstanding customer support. Fatcow is your right choice.

Go to http://www.fatcow.com for green hosting features!

Arvixe – Being one of the leading web hosting solutions, Arvixe now offered green hosting plans to all clients. Service with arvixe is basically all from industry standards, hosting with arvixe means satisfiction & success!

Greengeeks vs Hostgator vs Fatcow vs Arvixe

The four names are currently the most popular in green hosting service providers. No matter how you compare with all other hosting companies, they can always be trusted. But which one should you trust more and why?

From the above introduction for each provider, fatcow and HG are now owned by EIG company which is actually offering the same level hosting service. We'll mainly focus on greengeeks and hostgator. Hostgator can be certainly trusted for their long history and large scale business, they never lie to people in order to get sales. Greengeeks is relatively new comparing to hostgator but definitely an outstanding provider for every single effort they're doing. If we only focus on the green stuff, greengeeks is absolutely the best choice.

If you like to read more user recommendations and reviews, hostgator would be your right choice since they're trusted by a big amount clients all over the world, if you're highly environmental concerned then greengeeks is abosolutely the best one. You can't find another provider who's making so much effort in order to protect the environment.

Fatcow and Arvixe are also green server based providers. They might just advertised less than other groups in the business, but it does not affect them to build a green house and catch up with the world steps. Now, if you're interested with any of them, here're up to date promotional codes to save money by ordering with their services:

asp.net Starter kits Overview

ASP.NET is good platform for programming and web development, but for start users it lacks easy-to-use, standardized samples. To address this, Microsoft released a series of ASP.NET application samples known as the ASP.NET Starter Kits. The ASP.NET Starter Kits are fully functional sample ASP.NET applications that provide source code to accomplish typical Web development tasks. Each example is complete, documented, and extensible so that you can use the source code to jumpstart your ASP.NET development projects.

Since Asp.net starterkits are actually regular asp.net applications, if you're looking for the qualifying web hosting provider you're actually looking for the decent windows hosting or asp.net hosting. Those featured hosting providers always keep everything up to date and has long history in hosting business. For such case we highly recommend Arvixe LLC

Why Arvixe is Rated the Best Asp.net Starter kits Hosting?

Arvixe is awarded the best asp.net starter kits hosting provider based it's price, server features and tech support. Basically, arvixe asp.net hosting is featured with following

• They offer reliable and affordable hosting plans.
• They can support Asp.net frameworks side by side.
• They offer at least 99% uptime guarantee and money back guarantee.
• They're proved by thousands of webmasters and developers.

The arvixe hosting servers are setup on windows server 2012 with latest asp.net frameworks support. Over the past years, arvixe has been improving their service with every efforts they can. Arvixe is golden sponsor over lots of .net projects such as dotnetnuke, nopcommerce and other popular communities.

More about Asp.net Starter kits

There're total of 8 starter kits series from microsoft. They're Personal site starterkit, Club website starterkit, Time tracker starterkit, small business starterkit, classifieds starterkit, the beerhouse starterkit, Asp.net MVC storefront starterkit, WCF rest starterkit.

Each of the starter kits are working exactly like what their names described, personal website, community website, ecommerce website etc. If you're Asp.net developer and like to launch any of such applications, you can always choose the right starter kit and start the journey on programming.

What's required in order to use asp.net starter kits?

The starter kits source codes are compiled into a file named xxx.vsi. In order to unpack the file you need to have visual web developer or visual studio installed on your computer. The core design such as user management, role management etc are all configured through VS "Asp.net website management" section. It's a little complicated to configure a starterkit website because you need make a lot of changes on IIS and sql server database. During the process you will learn how to deal with Asp.net website issues and how to deploy it to live server. So asp.net starter kits are really nice if you wish to learn asp.net knowledges and IIS management.

Although you need to have VS installed in order to use asp.net starter kits, you don't need it on hosting server. Basically, starter kits are simple asp.net pages with Sql server backend. So most windows hosting providers be able to support starter kits website as long as you don't have some special requirements for your project. But since the starter kits websites are using sql express as default which is not supported any more by many webhosts, you will need to transfer the sql express database to full version sql server database.

Dotnetnuke is the most popular asp.net CMS system. For it's simple structure and large support communities, dotnetnuke is being used by thousands of personal and enterprise web applications. Since dotnetnuke is so popular, choosing the right dotnetnuke hosting is quite important to ensure your website always online. Here we'll discuss dotnetnuke side by side requirements for hosting server and compare the top dotnetnuke hosting providers.

TOP Dotnetnuke Hosting Providers

We have dealt with multiple Asp.net hosting companies and the following are selected in top list if you're looking for qualifying dotnetnuke hosting: Winhost, Hostgator, powerdnn, Arvixe.

They all provide the latest windows server and sql server versions on the market and be capable offerring affordable hosting plans. Take a quick look of their general hosting features

Among these reputable dnn hosting providers, arvixe, winhost and hostgator are traditional web hosting leader with multiple hosting solutions. Users be able to manage all service centrally from hosting control panel. So you have total control of website stuff and know how it works exactly.

For powerdnn(now managed.com), it's more about a hosted service other than common hosting service. It's dedicated for DNN software. Their service is all about dotnetnuke, they provide dnn installation, security, skin/module installation and every side support. What customer get is dnn host login and powerdnn team manage everything else for you like daily maintenance and software upgrade etc. The result is we pay relatively high monthly fee in order to enjoy the worry free service.

As we see, although all above hosting be able to offer excellent dotnetnuke hosting services but they have different advantages. Especially for powerdnn, because of its expensive service, it's only good choice if you run a big site and you don't want to manage server service by yourself. If you have tight budget and be able to manage website well by your own, the other three hosts is perfect choice.

Who's Using Dotnetnuke?

Before choosing the right dotnetnuke hosting, we should firstly know who's using this software mostly and then decide what they really need. Generally speaking, dotnetnuke is being used by follow groups.

Dotnetnuke developers — This includes dotnetnuke core developers and module developers. Dotnetnuke core developers are mostly within their official team and no worry about hosting stuff because they have a powerful system and service sponsor. In fact, it's your hornor if you can sponsor dotnetnuke development team since it will bring you a lot of customers. you will try best to provide their team the qualifying services.

As for dotnetnuke module developers, most of them are commercial purpose and act as regular users, the difference is they know more about what they really need. By programming their project they know what's required in order to use the final products.

Dotnetnuke Skinner — This group is also mainly commercial based, most of them are familiar with web design especially CSS part in order to produce a nice looking website.

Web developer — The web developers play a big role in dotnetnuke. Of course, it's referring to Asp.net web developers. because Dotnetnuke always catch up with the latest Asp.net technologies and frameworks, it's a good sample if you want to destribute a secure and professional website. Web developers are always good at programming and know a bit more on server system so they can find the actual webhosts which will be suitable for their projects.

Website users — Here we're referring to people who want to put up a nice website but with little knowledge in coding. Dotnetnuke definitely provides a good platform to meet their requirements, By adding or removing modules you can compose a professional website easily via dotnetnuke. But this group people almost have no knowledge on hosting stuff so they're the real persons who need qualifying suggestions from other people.

How to Choose the Best Dotnetnuke Hosting Service?

As you check from dotnetnuke official documentation, the dotnetnuke requirements are very few. IIS, Asp.net 3.5 SP1+, SQL Server 2005+. As long as the hosting be able to offer these features there would be no problem to support dotnetnuke. But several things you need to consider when choosing the qualifying hosting provider.

A. Server specifications — For performance and up to date technologies, windows server 2008 is MUST when you search for a qualifying dotnetnuke hosting provider. Windows server 2008 is the latest windows server edition and comes with a bunch of great features. By hosting with the latest windows server you can reduce the security holes and get better performance and finally you will benefit from it.

B. SQL Server specifications — Sql server must be seperated from web servers to ensure the site performance and server health. Sql server 2005 is the minimum requirement for nowadays technologies, of course sql server 2008 is the best choice.

C. Pricing — There does have a lot of providers who can support dotnetnuke but there's big difference for the price, a qualifying dotnetnuke hosting provider should always comes with affordable hosting plan for most people and offer excellent support. For our experience, dotnetnuke hosting plan under $10/mon is good enough.

Based on above specifications, you can expect 99% uptime at least. so you can always follow above rules to find the qualifying dotnetnuke hosting provider.

Hawkhost Brief Introduction

Hawkhost is originally called Devoted host which is created in year 2005. From the begining, devoted host is featured for reseller hosting and recommended by webmasters who is tired of downtime with other hosting companies. In year 2007, devoted was renamed to hawkhost officially in offerring affordable litespeed web hosting services. Till today, hawkhost has several data centers on multiple locations including Amsterdam, Singapore, Dallas, Washington, San Jose and Seattle in the U.S.

Hawkhost Hosting Spotlights

We do not have an account with hawkhost hosting service at the moment. Everything is written through our client's experience in the last few months, they're satisfied by hawkhost support with lots of positive comments. After checking their website and communication with their hosting support, they have following unbeatable offers.

• Excellent hosting features – Hawkhost is a standard cpanel hosting provider with every cpanel add-on services. Except for the basic services from other hosting provider, there're more from hawkhost such as latest php & mysql update, cpanel skin options. The best of the best is you can get SSH Access with any hawkhost shared hosting plan. Not many hosting providers could offer this service for various issue but hawkhost did it.
• Fast web server –  Hawkhost use advanced web server solution "Litespeed" which is recognized as 10 times faster than Apache.
• E-commerce compatible – E-commerce is considered mostly when people choose a web hosting provider, since you will collect money from your website, you have to make sure your ecommerce site will be running perfectly with less downtime. Hawkhost is simply on the figure, almost every open sourced e-commerce applications can be installed on hawkhost server and running smoothly.
• Affordable Hosting plan – Hawkhost prepared total of four shared hosting plans and it starts as cheap as $3.29/mon. It's definitely in the cheapest hosting service list for such price! Unlike many cpanel hosting based provider who have many restrictions such as number of file limitation, cpu limitation etc, hawkhost doesn't have such, they will notify you by email and ask you fix problems but not simply shutdown your website.
• Fantastic Datacenter – Hawkhost manages multiple world class datacenters, when you sign up the hosting plan you have the option to choose the one you desired.
• Fast customer support – Hawkhost  offers both live chat and ticket support. You get response from live chat within 30 seconds and 10 ~ 30 minutes with ticket system. Their support is available 24 x 7 x 365. You won't lose support during holidays like from other hosts.

There're mutiple hosting solutions available from hawkhost including shared, VPS, Reseller and semi-dedicated hosting. All hosting plans come with following offer

• Unlimited Email Accounts
• SSH (Secure Shell), SSL, FTP Support
• CGI, Ruby, Perl, PHP (5.2, 5.3 & 5.4) Support
• Free Site Builder
• LiteSpeed Web Server
• 24/7 Sales/Support

Visit http://www.Hawkhost.com for hosting plans!

Another unbeatable feature with hawkhost is you're not forced to sign up yearly or 2 years upfront. you have choice to register monthly, quarterly with the same price rate! It's extremely useful when you just like to use the hosting for short periods. Most other web hosts will charge high monthly fee plus setup cost if we just purchase monthly service, things are completely different with hawkhost.

What might be the weakness of hawkhost?

The biggest weakness of hawkhost should be the nameless from the industry. If you search hosting related stuff from the search engine you get little information about this company. For us, if we're not notified by clients, we would never know this company. I think the company is growing up quietly and only focus on service quality but pay less attention to business marketing. Also, if you search hawkhost user feedbacks or reviews on the web you won't get too much either because of it's quiety.

Update: Hawkhost is a well known brand today comparing to above writing from 2 years before. From editorial experience today, there's no real weakness of hawkhost service for its high performance and affordable price! if you're in need of reliable and honest hosting services, hawkhost is perfect choice!

How is hawkhost rated comparing to their competitors?

If we talk about service quality, hawkhost will never fail to compare with any web hosting service as for above outstanding hosting features. It's worth a try if you're looking for affordable and reliable cpanel hosting provider, Their litespeed web server hosting is still leading comparing two years before. Time has approved hawkhost is offering honest and reliable service to any size business. Especially in professional litespeed hosting service, hawkhost does not have a real competitor. The company collected good experience on how to make full use of this service and generate the biggest success to each website!

Is there any hawkhost coupon available?

Sure there is! There're several different hawkhost coupons to sign up. It will save you 25% ~ 50% according to the service you're going to sign up. They have officially offered 50% off hawkhost coupon on website, but they provided more nice promo codes as following: