Category Archives:
Tutorial & Guides

It's easy to get your personal website online! Based the fast improving technologies, we have so many choice to create a website and probably confused how to select. Hence, this page analyze the top 3 solutions side by side to help select the most suitable one with your requirements.

Sitebuilder Wizard

Since from the 1990s, sitebuilder service has been helping millions people configuring their first websites. Either for family photo gallery site or personal portfolio site or even simple store and forum website, sitebuilder has been showing its powerful abilities with new tech improvements. Till today, there're over one hundred sitebuilder products online with different features. All sitebuilders come with WYSIWYG feature, what you need is not programming but more about designing skills for excellent website creation.

Attenion, different sitebuilder service will let you publish the web contents to different locations.

1. Most online sitebuilder service can only publish your website to their own website directory, users only get a web URL to view it online. We don't have direct access to download the actual files. Weebly is probably the best example.
2. For dedicated sitebuilder softwares, we make the design then publish to specific website space. The software will generate all needed files & database to support a website. In this way we have full control for our website, and in case we need to transfer it to another server, it can be easily done.

If you prefer to use a sitebuilder service, we highly suggest plesk sitebuilder solution which is offered by multiple reputable hosting providers like InmotioHosting and Hostgator. This sitebuilder is by far the most powerful and user friendly solution, with over 4 thousands build-in templates, you can create a professional website in minutes!

CMS Software

The most popular choice today. Especially for its free feature for many softwares, many people start with it. Many web developers and programmers even use the platform for new website development.

Unlike any other website solution, CMS is based on templates, modules and plugins with well-structured admin panel. Most cms softwares can be customized in the way you liked. Scalability and user friendly are most featured for CMS solutions. Using cms is not only a choice but also good experience to understand more about web developing. It's not just a work but fun.

Considering website security? Want to add more functions without a programmer? Try out cms and you will get more than expected. If you want to know which cms software to work with, we highly recommend wordpress and joomla. They provide resourceful templates and plugins which is easy to get. If you want to create a blog or news website, go with wordpress. If you want to build an enterprise or shopping cart site, joomla provides the most scalable solution.

Programming

The primary choice for enterprise websites. Because you want to keep each code under cotrol for fast maintenance in case there's need. As about programming, developer will test everything side by side to ensure the best compatibility on production server. In this way, the website security, performance and usability is extremely optimized with your exact requirement. If you choose to program a site, you must get a experienced programmer to deal with. It's the best if you have your own IT department so everything can be centrally controlled.

Regardless any advantage of programming solution, everything is money based. Hundreds or thousands USD dollar is expected depends the overall website requirement. It takes time and manual works to complete the project thus it's not affordable for personal or small size website purpose. This solution is only best for enterprises.

As above explanation and comparison, cms is probably the best choice for most users. No coding skills required but you can setup a professional and security website. Based various control panel installer, you even don't have to deal with the challenging installation process.

Web hosting is handy service today and widely offered by lots of providers. However, almost each company is unique on every side. Because of this, users have to learn a bit for needed service plan. We have concluded top 10 mistakes in choosing the right hosting in this article so our readers can avoid in case there's such need.

Mistake 1: Take free domain as serious offer

Lots of hosting companies provide free domain service if we choose to host with their service. It does help reduce our first investment, however it's not good for ownership management. Many hosting companies are domain resellers but not the actual provider. Hence there'll be some delay in using the website, especialy when they programmed the system by themselves. Sometimes they have to register our prefered domain manually after we submitted personal details.

As we see, it's absolutely not good in order to have everything managed by ourselves. That's why we always suggest to have domain and hosting separated from different providers. We have bad experience in getting the domain after hosting expiration because the hosting company refuse to provide support in transferring out.

So the correct way is to ignore such offer if you're going to configure your business site on it. You need to have everything under control to avoid any potential problem.

Mistake 2: Looking for unlimited support feature

We know unlimited stuff doesn't exist but we always like such advertisement. Seriously, there's clear restriction for every hosting account on server end because the hardware resource is limited. Those serious business hosting providers will tell you the exact limits on website, even if they advertised something unlimited there will be good explanation for how much you can take.

The right start is to evaluate your website usage carefully then choose the right deal.

Mistake 3: Looking for super low cost service

Nobody wants to spend too much in the begining for various reasons. However everything comes with reasonable price. If something is provided for inormal price rate then either quality is bad or you're going to deal with lots of problems. Same as hosting, it's big investment for service providers thus they must be profitable in offering hosting plans. Just take a look at some leading providers like Inmotion, their price is always at healthy rate no matter how hard the competetion is.

Basically, we need to know the general business logic and evaluate between price and service. You get what you pay, it's always golden rule in any industry.

Mistake 4: Do not check existing user comments

Lots of hosting companies are doing well in website design and advertisement. People can be easily guided to their service. We might can't wait more to claim their best offer. But learning about how existing user say is always valuable to determine if we can get good support. No matter how good it's being advertised, we should always evaluate their service in multi sides because we're paying.

Mistake 5: Do not contact pre-sales support

Not sure why some people refuse to contact pre-sales support before sending out payment. Everybody should have some questions in mind and service providers have provided different communication tunnels. Just a single click to get online support. Just tell your question/doubt and see how support replies. This does not only help us clear out doubts in mind but also help us understand how their support work. So make sure check with pre-sales support for any hosting service as it will tell us directly if it's worth to go.

Mistake 6: Do not read the company AUP and TOS

This might be ignored by most users. Most of the time we won't get problems if we have been doing things good, however it doesn't mean everything is safe. Based our experience, lots of providers hide their limitations in AUP & TOS terms such as CPU and disk usage limits. So it's safe to read those terms before get involved. Many user accounts get suspended because of over using system resources.

Mistake 7: Do not sign up yearly deal

Want to save money? Then why should you sign up monthly instead yearly? As we know, the monthly cost is pretty high comparing to yearly pre-pay. All hosts provide at least 30 day money back guarantee, means if we don't like the service, we can close account to get full refund. So whenever we want to save money for hosting service, try to sign up yearly deal, especially for those super promotional coupon codes, they can only be applied for one or more years registration.

Mistake 8: Sign up incorrect hosting plan

We served lots of people inquiring for account migration because they have registered the wrong plan. For example, we have 3 class hosting plans with different support features. However, some clients just focus on price and ignored the technical features. After they understand the difference they request us to move accounts from one server to another. So make sure to read plan details carefully then choose the correct plan.

Mistake 9: Do not apply any coupon code

Coupon code is provided by almost all hosting companies. Some times the discount rate is up to 50% so its great opportunity to save. Especially when we order a business class hosting, promo code is crucial to reduce our first investment. Those codes are easily to search out like this website, make sure to get it and apply during check out. Some hosting providers offer promotional link instead coupon so please do your research.

Mistake 10: Enter incorrect contact email address

Probably the most frequent problem with our experience. Clients contact support to complain not receiving account confirmation emails. However the system did send and we even tried manually send but they still can't receive. Finally we verified they entered wrong contact email address for sign up. As we see how important it is to be careful in entering profile details.

Above is the list of common mistakes in signing up hosting service based our years serving experience. Make sure to read it and avoid those mistakes in choosing your prefered hosting plan.

Most of the time when we evaluate a hosting service, US location is an important factor for final decision. Although web hosting is available anywhere in the world, why we still prefer to US service? This article provides in-depth investigation on this topic and guidance on how to choose from the leading providers.

Price value

You get what you pay, this is gold rule for all industries. However, you get much more from US for web hosting service. Even those budget hosting plans provide unlimited space, bandwidth and database etc. But such features are limited from many outside US providers. At the meanwhile, server performance and overall uptime guarantee is not even compatible.

US hosting server plans always provide free email service and a free domain registration while it's add-on service from lots of other providers. Because of this, you don't have to pay more to get the same service from US companies.

Fast connectivity

US is the origin of internet and manages 10 root DNS servers. Lots of US hosting companies have setup their own data centers with leading technologies. Because of the matured market and technologies, they can easy get strong support from upstream providers and be able to co-operate with various data center services. Another point is all continents are connected to US via fiber networks. That means we won't see clear latence in browsing a US or local hosted website. Especially when you want to open international business, US server has big advantage either for speed or user friendly or search engine friendly.

Stability

With regarding to stability, US server provides unbeatable advantages especially when the server is under some kind attacking like dDos, there's no better place than US for guaranteed performance and security. Being the internet origin, there're lots of reputable ISP with leading hardware and technology base. They have sufficient bandwidth and IP resource to filter spam traffic so your website server can be always in safe hand. Because of this, 99%+ server uptime is simple guarantee by lots of US hosting providers.

Customer service

US hosting servers are supported 24*7*365 by multi level professionals in different contact channels. They're available via web chat, hotline tel phones, email and helpdesk ticket. Most of the time, customer request can be forwarded to higher level support directly for quick problem fixing. However, such support feature only available from big providers outside US. And the fact is many small hosting companies are doing reseller of US hosting, they have to check with actual support frequently for customer concerns. Just imagine there's urgent fix to be applied at midnight for your website, how can you go without a reputable support service?

Usability

After many years' development, the US hosting is now a matured industry with lots of standards to follow up. For linux hosting plans, over 90% are cpanel based for easy and user friendly purpose. In this way, customers do not need to learn a bit for new environment. cPanel provides you full access for hosting service management.

Things are different from other providers, in order to reduce investment or for any other reasons, they use custom control panel with their own styles. Because of this, we have to learn a lot to be familiar with it. Also, for such control panel system, many functions are removed to ensure the server security. Thus if we want to make some sensitive changes, we have to contact support.

From above comparison, we know US hosting service provides unbeatable advantages from any side review. Actually, not only for hosting, US is also leading on many other internet related products because of its advanced hardware/software structures. The most important is about their long history in offering the service, they got sufficient experience in configurition and how to deal with various problems. They provide different hosting solutions to support your various requirements like budget hosting and managed hosting. You can always get the proper plan with quanlity support.