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Finding the proper web hosting provider is absolutely the most important task before our website going online. However, not everybody is led in right direction. For example there're various top 10 hosting list in various comparison on internet, but someone simply says NO to all of them and provided lots of beautiful reasons. Under such circumstance, people who have no experience in this industry will be easily misguided and confused how to choose the right one. After experienced with hosting talkers on the web and reviews of related hosting websites, I would like to share my personal opinions about those websites. If you feel it's useful, make sure to share with other people who're in need of unbiased advice.

Web Hosting Advertisement Tricks

Indeed, many hosting companies are living by advertisement. Especially for those new setup brands, it's hard to get an order without advertising anywhere. The most popular name hostgator gained it's success by right ads and other marketing tricks. So don't hate those ads on google or other websites, just think we're the service providers and need more visitors to check our products. The only thing we need pay attention is to make sure we can evaluate correctly so won't make the wrong choice.

When we deal with a newly setup service, we always need do further efforts to make sure it will be working properly. Normally, such service is good choice for novice because they always offer us nice price with reasonable features. For professional webmasters, a matured hosting company is suggested with no doubt because they know exactly what's needed to support their online apps.

Are those Top 10 Hosting lists all bad?

We always see top 10 providers for various service plans and there are always retort to such ratings. It's not a surprise those ethical websites are less and less because of hard life, however we have to admit nothing is perfect. Every webmaster has their own top 10 list and may differ a lot to others. It's simply from their own experience. Nobody can test out all hosting providers then make a real top 10 list.

So can we trust such rating? If we check out some top 10s we should have noticed most are from big companies. Such brands are serving a large amount clients on the globe. Many professionals on hosting forums are trying to convince people to avoid such ratings because they never trust them. However we have to admit such companies are indeed serving thousands of people very well. It's quite normal to see both positive and negative comments because of their huge business.

Another popular suggestion on the web forums is to avoid EIG brands. EIG is very active in acquiring other companies recent years and indeed caused some problems during platforms transition. If we really want to avoid any EIG brand there won't be too much choice left, even the hostgator is now part of their business. Can we say EIG is zero good for hosting? Absolutely not! I can't say EIG is 100% perfect choice but they do control a big part of the hosting market and they do serve lots of happy clients with no complaints. Generally speaking, the EIG hosting business is mainly on shared linux hosting, other service plans like VPS/Dedicated server and cloud hosting etc are not popularly offered yet, so other companies still be able to compete with their own advantages.

How to select the correct web hosting service?

It is frequently asked from almost every web forums, but the answer is pretty simple. "Know what you need", this is short and the best answer. If you just need 1GB space then don't look for 10 or 100GB offer with the same price. If you need a VPS server, never go with a shared, no matter how attractive it is. We should also remember we get what we pay for, that's always the golden rule in web hosting. If you still not sure how to select, make sure to contact professionals around you or popular forums like webhostingtalk. We're also available on this blog site to answer your questions, don't hesitate to contact us when in need of hosting help.

Before purchasing a certain product, consumers nowadays consult the Internet for reviews, recommendations, price, and product specifications. In particular, people looking to purchase new laptops or all in one computers often compare different models online, before going to a store to test out the ones they are most interested in. Seeing the actual products in use often makes a big difference – especially for newer technologies like all in one computers. Yet, even after choosing their favorite model in store, many people return home and make their tech purchases online. This situation is where having a business website and a good web hosting service is essential.

Whether you own a computer retailer or are simply running a family-inherited bakeshop, developing an online presence these days is a must. As a matter of fact, most businesses can’t afford downtime, when consumers can’t view their site. Choosing the right web hosting service is one of the most important decisions that you will make for your business. The host manages your servers on which your business site will run, and therefore has total control of your organization’s connection to its customers. Be an informed consumer; don’t be drawn in by cheap packages, or other freebies. Check out these tips to help you choose the most reliable web hosting company for you.

Customer support

Make sure your web hosting company offers adequate support. When your website goes down or encounters an email issue, you need to have someone who can help you fix the glitch. It is best to go for hosting providers that provide 24/7 phone support, with representatives that can speak and understand your language..

Backup

Find a company that offers adequate backup. The next time you accidentally delete a blog directory for your business, you don’t have to panic. All you need to do is call your host to retrieve a backup copy, and reload your content back online. It is also wise to ask about your hosting company’s disaster contingency plan, to ensure that they are also backing up these files.

Parking service

Determine if you can park your organization’s other domain names with their servers. A lot of firms purchase .net, .com, .org, and even hyphenated versions of their domain name, service names, misspellings, and many more. It is more convenient and efficient for brand management to have all these names in a single control panel without losing traffic.

Guaranteed uptime

You don’t want your clients to experience a blank screen when they go to their URL. Look for a web hosting service with a proven reputation for uptime and redundancy. Choose a company with a 99 percent uptime guarantee or more. Make sure your company has multiple locations or mirrored servers, so that when server goes down, they will have another one ready to go.

Blog-ability

Having a company blog is a staple aspect in your online marketing campaign. But even if you don’t want to start a blog yet, make sure your hosting company meets the requirements for WordPress, the world’s biggest blogging platform.

Accessibility

Find a host that gives you access to the server, so that you can make email accounts, modify server settings, and more. You will need access to your email online, not just through Outlook. Choose a company that lets you login to your company email, even when you are away from your desktop, just in case Outlook crashes.

Add on Features

Before being mesmerized by the quotes that you get from these web hosting firms, make sure you know what you are paying for. There are companies out there who will offer you a low start up rate, but  a basic package without additional features. Do you want an email address? That’ll mean extra purchase. Thinking about a getting a blog? That’s another expense. You get the idea.

Scalability

For now, you might be thinking that your business is only a small business, but when choosing a web hosting service, work with a company that can scale as your business grows. As your retailing business takes off, you need a hosting plan that can be upgraded, too.

Shared hosting or dedicated hosting

A good way to save money is have your website under a shared hosting plan. This means that your business site is hosted together with other people’s sites for as low as $6 monthly. But shared hosting services often suffer hitches and glitches – a problem on one site can undermine and slow the others. Bear in mind too that a quick website response time is important for impatient web users and web crawlers. Think then about getting a virtual private server that gives you faster performance and better quality service overall.

All networking devices are utilizing IP addresses. IPv4, being the most popular IP solution, has ballooned exponentially in recent years. Many groups have told the exact date when IPv4 will be used up. Because of the fast growing up networking service, it has necessitated the adoption of IPv6. IPv6 is by far the only perfect protocol intended to support this growth via the use of expanded IP addresses.

IPv6 Introduction & Hosting

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is a revision of the Internet Protocol (IP) developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). IPv6 is intended to succeed IPv4. IPv6 was developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 running out of addresses. IPv6 has a length of 128 bit which means there're total of 2¹²⁸, or approximately 3.4×10³⁸ addresses. It’s a big number that almost capable of serving each grid of sand on the earth and still several times amount remains! In theory, IPv6 will ensure every internet device gets one or more static IP addresses, it greatly reduced the cost for every online business.

The key features with IPv6

• Larger Address Capacity (approximately 340 undecillion or 3.4 x 1038 addresses)
• IP Security (IPSec) implementation for all networks utilizing IPv6
• Simplified Packet Header for Routing Efficiency
• Enhanced Support Options for Mobile Computing Devices
• Enabling of More Advanced Communication & Collaboration Applications
• Ability to Transmit a Packet to Multiple Destinations in a Single Send Operation

How is IPv6 Different from IPv4?

IPv6 perfectly solved the lack of resource from IPv4 and actually provided more than what we need in the next 100 years. Does that mean everything is good with this solution and IPv4 is out of date? Absolutely not, there is a long way to go for IPv6 if you take a further look at it.

IPv6 is composed with 128 bit address which means it’s very long. Take a sample address for instance “4aae:17a1:1a23:45:179:a8ff:12fe:cf67”. As we see, it’s very hard for people to remember such address. On the other hand, the 32 bit IPv4 address is 100% Arabic number based and very short, for example the “192.168.1.1” can be remembered by everybody. Also, the IPv6 uses colon to separate the eight groups of four hexadecimal digits while IPv4 uses comma, there will be some time for people to be used to this change. Generally, the IPv6 is more complex than IPv4 and might give end user management problems. It’s good solution in the long run, but IPv4 is definitely more user friendly.

Best IPv6 Hosting Provider

According to an online survey, IPv6 shares around 0.2% total internet traffic at the moment, means it’s not yet popularly used or supported by service providers. In real web hosting service, IPv4 is still the main player. Because most shared hosting are cpanel based but cpanel is not yet implemented the IPv6 support officially, so if we look for IPv6 support we have to give up cpanel as well as shared hosting option. In that case, VPS or dedicated server with IPv6 support is the only choice for people.

Cpanel IPv6 implement update: http://cpanel.net/ipv6_implementation_update/

Recommended VPS hosting with IPv6 support: Liquidweb.com

Shared Hosting with IPv6 support: he.net

WordPress is considered the best and most widely used blogging platform in the blogosphere.  Aside from being free, it is user-friendly and supported by thousands of free themes and plugins that can be easily installed.  However, WordPress is notorious for high CPU usage in shared hosting environments.

Competition in the web hosting industry has become heated in the past few years because of the number of players.  As such, majority of web hosts now offer very low monthly rates that even allow unlimited domains.  But if you’re paying a monthly fee of only $4 to host your domains, there’s no such thing as unlimited.  At this price, you’re probably sharing a server with a multitude of domains and don’t have much room to breathe.  And if you have one or more WordPress blogs, it’s likely you’ve been flagged by the web host for using too much resource from their CPU. Then again, you probably don’t have enough traffic to justify an expensive upgrade to a dedicated server.  Here are some quick tips to optimize your WordPress blog without the need to tweak any complicated codes in your theme.

1.  Install WP-SuperCache or W3 Total Cache.  Since WordPress is database-intensive, it renders a page dynamically for each view.  These plugins perform caching that renders viewed pages into static content and significantly reduces calls to the database.

2.  Remove unnecessary plugins.  Nothing can be more tempting than installing numerous plugins that offer various functions to your WordPress blog.  However, most plugins consume a lot of resources, which can slow down site loading and get you flagged by the web host.  Such plugins include Related Post and any plugin that check stats regularly.  If you need to check stats, use Google Analytics instead. 

3.  Avoid Tweets in your blog.  Plugins that update tweets on your blog increase database entries. It’s unlikely your readers will be interested to know where you had dinner or what you gave your boyfriend on his birthday.

4.  Always upgrade WordPress and active plugins.  Upgrades translate to removal of bugs and improvements on the software.  Keeping them updated means your blog is optimized.

5.  Repair and optimize your database.  This can only be done through your cpanel.  To ensure you do it properly, contact your web host’s support representative and request for detailed instructions on how to repair your database.

6.  Reduce the number of widgets.  Widgets can hog resources, especially those that generate images or thumbnails.  Better to remove those that are merely for aesthetics and keep those that are simple and provide more value to your blog.

7.  Choose a simpler theme.  If all else fails, the best option is to simplify your theme.  A WordPress theme that is clean with minimal graphics generates a lighter load from your web host server.

More often than not, bloggers get carried away in designing and setting up their WordPress blog because of the multitude of options available.  We only realize the impact when we get flagged by our host, or worse, get suspended.  Remember that in a shared hosting environment, it is our responsibility to ensure our domain consumes equal resources among 200+ other sites. At home, bloggers can easily connect equipment to their computers using handy Computer Cables in order to maximize potential. No auxiliary equipment or computer cables can be used by the host that would improve the sharing environment for bloggers instantly.  It’s all about storage and memory of the server.  If you already have a significant amount of traffic or you insist on keeping your WordPress blog flashy and flamboyant, then it may be time to move on to a dedicated server or at least a virtual private server (VPS).

When your web requirements is far beyond a shared hosting environment, the two popular choice would be VPS or cloud hosting. Because they both have similar features, we always have to compare a lot in order to choose the right solution for our web requirements. Indeed, they look similar but difference are more. We will compare the main features between the two products so you will get a basic ideal when you need a VPS and when should go with cloud hosting.

Relationship between VPS and Cloud hosting

No matter what kind of hosting, they're all configured on actual server hardware/software. Both VPS and cloud hosting server have the actual amount of disk space, memory and network bandwidth etc. They both can be managed via web base control panels. Because of this, more and more server providers begin to offer a new type hosting – cloud vps hosting. It's becoming a more popular choice comparing to traditional service plans, we also see the advantages of cloud computing.

Difference between VPS and Cloud Hosting

Comparing to trandtional VPS server, coud hosting is based on newest technologies so there're lots of difference. In order to understand their main difference, we can compare in the following orders

Scalability and stability

All VPS resources are pre-configured and could not be changed while running, services like disk space, RAM are all setup during purchasing. On the other hand, the cloud hosting server resource is active, means it can be added/removed instantly based on your resource usage and bills accordingly.

As for stability, the VPS servers are sharing the single dedicated box resources so if one of the users over used it's allocated resource then other vps users will be affected. However such case does not happen to cloud hosting. In theory the cloud hosting server resources can be unlimited, so a single user over use will not affect other customers.

Customization and Security

VPS is working like a small dedicated server and user can perform almost whatever they like. Since all vps data is stored on a single local disk partion so it's easy to maintain and security protection can be ensured mostly. On the other hand, the cloud hosting resources are distributed across many machines. This limites the control over data and security because you're not sure where the data is stored in any given time. There's still a long way to go for cloud computing security. On this point of view, VPS has more advantages over security protection.

Cost

VPS is charged based on your chosen specs such as disk, RAM, bandwidth etc. Because of this we have good control over the budget for predictable usage. The cloud hosting billing can be charged per minutes. It's perfect option if we're not sure how much resources to use and don't wish the web service going down. The disadvantage is we can't control over the cost especially for some heavy traffic applications.

Is VPS better than Cloud hosting?

Based above comparison we should have learnt it really depends our actual web requirements. If we have predictable usage and need reliable security protection for the server, VPS would be better selection. If it's a big application with high server resources usage, cloud hosting would be right solution if we have good budget.

Best VPS and cloud hosting solutions

There're many quality vps hosting providers, we recommend the top 5 vps hosting names in case you need our recommendation. Also the myhosting custom vps hosting plan is also highly recommended if you like to make a custom vps server. For cloud hosting we highly suggest checking out the main datacenter providers such as rackspace, softlayer etc because they're direct service provider with no extra cost.

VPS is hot on the web, no matter if we're the actual end service user or running a vps hosting business, we certainly need the right software to manage the server professionally and securely. In this post I would like to introduct 3 of the most popular web based vps management softwares and the popular service provider.

What will a good vps management software do?

A good software solution will be easy to deploy and friendly to both admin and clients. In short, it can complete the following work on the fly

1. Automatically provision VPS and setup all configuration.
2. Integrated with billing system,such as WHMCS.
3. Reset the administrator password easily.
4. Adjust the server resource such as CPU,memory or disk on the fly.
5. Transfer among different nodes and be able to export/import configurations to other management softwares.

What're some of the popular vps management softwares?

Please note, the software is not referring to the hosting control panel solution like cpanel or webmin etc. The management software is about the host system level solutions where users be able to reload the vps OS and reset server root password etc. There're lots of such products on the web like virtpanel, hypervm etc. Here we will check out 3 of the most popular ones "Hypervm, Veportal and Solusvm".

Hypervm vs Veportal vs Solusvm

Hypervm is an open source software for virtual server management, it is a multi-tiered, multi-server, multi-virtualization software product. The spotlight with hypervm is it's fully integrated with the most powerful open source linux control panel – Kloxo, all Kloxo functions can be accessed from Hypervm without having to log into Kloxo. Some core features with hypervm as the following

• Integration with whmcs and awbs
• Cross datacenter deployment
• Distributed management via single console
• OpenVZ and Xen compatible
• Windows virtualization via Xen
• Built in messaging system

Hypervm official site: http://lxcenter.org/software/hypervm

About Veportal – Veportal is a light weight and affordable VPS management software, unlike the complex design from hypervm, veportal is featured for it's simple/clear. Both server admin or start users be able to familiar with it in short time. Core features with Veportal

• Detailed Node Statistics
• Detailed VPS Resource Usage
• Universal Import from OpenVZ
• Instant Official OS-Template Downloads
• Simple & Advanced IP Pooling

More details can be found on this veportal official page

About Solusvm – It's probably the best and most popular vps management solution. Solus Virtual Manager (SolusVM) is a powerful GUI based VPS management system with full OpenVZ, Linux KVM, Xen Paravirtualization and Xen HVM support. SolusVM allows you and your clients to manage a VPS cluster with security & ease. The features from Solusvm include all above softwares.

So from above introduction, the Solusvm is definitely the best solution at the moment. Especially the windows compatible feature makes it almost the only solution for many server providers. Hypervm has similar feature but multiple bugs reported and caused huge loss to users. As for Veportal, it's perfect solution for linux VPS managing but lack of support for windows server. Their biggest customer is BurstNET, if it come with windows support, I guess the BurstNET won't choose Solusvm because of the price.

Anyway, if it's just for linux vps management purpose, Veportal is highly recommended solution for pricing and friendly GUI design. If windows is planned in your business, Solusvm would be the right one.