Web Hosting Geeks' Blog » disk space

How Much RAM / Bandwidth / Disk Space Do I Really Need?

Art — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 16:32:17 +0000

If you’ve ever been shopping for a server or a web host, then you know exactly how often this question comes up. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for the perfect dedicated host, or just a shared provider that will snuggle up well with your personal blog: At some point, you’ll start to worry about the amount of available RAM, bandwidth, and disc space. If you take a look around, you’ll very quickly come to realize that most providers offer a wealth of plans, each with diverging selling points where these hardware pieces are concerned. In essence, it’s a jungle out there.

Before you panic and purchase too much—or worse, too little—of each, though, let us guide you through the questioning process. We know a bit about server load, and considering we’ve put them together below, you might as well use our server statistics tips to guide you through the shopping blues.

What Does Your Five Year Look Like?

Right off the bat, it’s worth considering what you actually want to do with your website. Are you using your chunk of the Web to hock product, or are you posting daily content to a news bog about kittens? Will you be hosting information about your multimillion dollar corporation, or are you just creating a personal portfolio for your design gig?

Consider the Scalability

Once you’ve got the exact five year plan of your project in mind, consider how hard it would be to compensate for unexpected growth within your target market. In other words, the question is not so much how much RAM, bandwidth, and disk space you need, but how hard it will be to get more later. If your business takes off in a massive way, will you be able to upgrade quickly to match pace? If not, starting out large may be a better course of action. If your personal blog is not likely to garner much attention, and smaller specifications will match your initial need, it’s a safe bet that going budget will be an ideal solution.

Remember too that it’s easier to scale up when using shared hosting than it is with dedicated hosting. You can always bump your plan up a tier at HostGator, but adding more disk space to your dedicated server may be much more costly. Always keep the budget in mind, but don’t short change yourself in the future by staying cheap.

Guarantees – Separating Fact from Fiction

Art — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:59:05 +0000

As web hosting companies continue to try to get a leg up on one another, many of them include in their offerings different types of “guarantees”. This is the point at which we remember that, like any other, these are businesses, and the “guarantee” is a marketing tactic.

We also remember, though, that this word does still mean something: it bounds the web host to certain types of behavior, with potential consequences if they don’t follow through. What do guarantees mean then, and what can you expect if your host can’t meet them?

Disk space and bandwidth – Not so much

One of the most popular is the guarantee of “unlimited” disk space and bandwidth. It shouldn’t take too much of a technical expert to be suspicious of this one. Of course, disk space and bandwidth can’t possibly be unlimited. Walk into any one web host right now, and you can calculate the precise amount of data they can hold and data transfer they can handle. Granted, those numbers will boggle you if you think about them too long.

To run afoul of this guarantee, though, won’t require you to go that high. It will only require you to go high enough that you are long past using what you pay for. It’s impossible to say how high this is, and maybe some hosts will bite the bullet and not say anything no matter how bad you abuse their systems. Likely, though, what will happen is beyond some very egregious point, your host will ask you to either upgrade your account or (politely) take a hike. Since they are free to do business with you or not they aren’t technically breaking their pledge. So just don’t host the entire EMI back collection on your $3.99 account.

Uptime – Possibly more true

Since uptime is one of the most critical features a web host can provide, providers attempt to guarantee percentages of time your web site will be accessible. This is another one to take with a grain of salt. There is clearly only so much a web host can control, especially outside of its own facility.

99.9% uptime is the industry minimum standard, and is the only one you should really put much stock into: at a minute and a half a day, it’s a reasonable expectation. Just adding one more 9 to that brings it to questionable enforceability. 99.99% uptime means that your site is down no more than one minute per week. 99.999% gives them 26 seconds a month to get your site back up.

Now granted, web hosts are doing more real work to back up these guarantees, such as the increasing use of multiple data centers in different cities. Just make sure that your host gives you some indication that you will be compensated if your site goes down for longer than 26 seconds.

24/7 support

Finally there are support guarantees, and these you should keep them to. Given the chaos that can go on in any business, let alone a web host, these can be brazen claims depending on the specifics and one you might need to rely on. Hold their feet to the fire on this one.

Guarantees from any company many not be completely reliable, but that doesn’t change your need for reliability. Know what you’re getting into with them, and know what your options are if they fail.

Web Hosting and Web Site Launch

Dmitry — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 17:17:33 +0000

A web site is the most effective as well as cost effective way to advertise about your product and company in the large global market. There are many web hosting companies providing world class Internet base to our customers along with other web hosting services like, website design, logo design, and email service.

Why web hosting service?

Web hosting service is the service which will launch your website on the World Wide Web and make you available to the online users as well. There are two kinds of web hosting services, the ones which can be availed free of cost, and the ones which are paid web hosting services. A free web hosting service, as the name suggests, is the web hosting service which will launch your company website without paying any fees to the service provider but the website of the company will be, in that case, bound to present the advertisement and banners of the web hosting company. A free web hosting service is greatly liked by customers but it has limitations which make it less preferable. These limitations are basically the limited disk space and limited data transfer.

A paid web hosting service is then a better option. However, if you are a small business organization and do not want spend much funds on website hosting free web hosting will be a better option.

For organizations which have enough resources to concentrate on extended website design, they must opt for paid web hosting service as it will allow their website more space, as it will be given more advanced services by the web hosting service provider. However, if you wish to spend a handsome amount of money on web hosting, make sure you get the top web hosting service for your organization. A good website will be an impressive introduction to the company and so, make sure your company website not only looks perfect but it is also well managed. A web hosting service should not only launch you in the global Internet world but it should also manage it well after it is launched. Web site management is one of the functions which require great efficiency and skill.

Find the best web host for yourself!

Get hold of a company which gives you best services at modest prices. Find the best web hosting service for your company website and this is possible if you properly analyze web hosting reviews of various web hosting companies. You must make a sound decision on the basis of reviews if you wish to get the top web hosting service.

There are various kinds of web hosting services like shared web hosting service, reseller web hosting, server space and bandwidth service. A good server space is required for loading sufficient information to the website by adding a sufficient number of webpages to the website, whereas shared web hosting service is required to maintain links and hyper links on the webpages of the website. So take sufficient time to decide the best web hosting service for your organization’s website.

Know How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Company

Dmitry — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:52:42 +0000

Before actually beginning your quest to find the top web hosting company, it will be a good idea to first know and understand what a good web host is so that you can make the right choice. The web host is really a service provider who will place your website on a server that connects to the Internet. Thus, when you think about finding the best web hosting company you need to be sure that its server is fast and that the company provides near total uptime since you don’t want your website to be inaccessible to visitors because the server is down.

The web host usually has thousands of websites and may use more than one web server for that purpose, and so you will need to rent out space on the server to have your website have a presence on the World Wide Web. Thus, the key to choosing the best web hosting service is to find the web host who manages things well so that you are not taken up with bothering about what the latest server technology is and how to maintain your website. So, before you go reading up on all the different web hosting reviews, you should be clear that it is the web host who will deal with the technical side of things and you only need to focus on building your online business.

Today, you will find that the top web hosting companies are more or less having standardized features and among the more common ones are Control Panel, Diskspace, Bandwidth, Email Account, Scripting language and the ability to directly have customer support either through phone, email or through the web.

Next, you will need to consider what price you are paying for disk space and also the price to Bandwidth ratio. The best web hosting companies are those that will not over charge you for their Web Hosting Plans and a rule of thumb in this regard is that the greater the disk space as well as bandwidth that the web hosting company offers, the more you will end up paying per month to them.

Therefore, you need to know which the most competitive priced is for you which will depend on popularity which can be judged by looking at awards won by the web host, good web hosting reviews about it and whether it gets a lot of traffic or not. Next, you should look at reliability, speed as well as guarantee of uptime which means that the web host must guarantee a minimum of 99% uptime. Thus, you should enquire whether the web hosting company has redundant back up systems or not, which if it is affirmative, will allow alternative internet connections to kick in should the main connection get interrupted.

Furthermore, you need to look at the speed at which your site functions and this will depend on the different network connection types used. It is quite usual for service providers to choose to connect through T1 or even T3 lines. However, the better option is to use Optical Carrier lines because T1 lines give speeds of 1.5 mega bits per second, while T3 lines have speeds of 43 mega bits per second. In the case of Optical Carrier lines the minimum speed would be 51.85 mega bits per second and top speeds can touch as much as 155 to even 622 mega bits per second and this can go up to nearly five thousand mega bits per second.

So, the parameters you need to look for in the best web hosting company are proper management and reliable equipment and speedy service, which should help you decide on choosing one service provider over the other.

Web Hosting Guide

Dmitry — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:26:18 +0000

Looking for and buying a reliable web hosting solution is an imperative decision. Whether you are doing online business, providing important information or sharing views online on a common interest, you need a reliable web hosting service that will allow online visitors to browse through your site effortlessly. It is only powerful web hosting that allows your website to be downloaded, browsed and updated in minimal time.

Trying to identify a web host can be a very daunting task especially when there are so many available nowadays and all of them promise one thing or another. Hence, it is crucial that before you jump in, you do your own homework or research for selecting the most appropriate web hosting company for your website.

With the changing trend of technology, web hosts are also changing. Most of them provide various services in addition to their basic ones. Say if you are running an e-commerce website, then of course you need high end security and a medium through which you can manage your web content efficiently. There are many tools that facilitate this, however if your web hosting service is not reliable then you can miss out on serious revenues and prospective clients.

Once you have determined and identified what web hosting services you require for your online business, it is then time to enlist certain web hosting features and options you must consider. You can find below some of the most important aspects of web hosting:

Disk space and bandwidth

You should know how much space your website would need and approximate data it will generate. When we talk about disk space, well, it’s actually the amount of storage assigned to you by the web hosting provider. The bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to access and leave your website. In case your website has a lot of graphics then you would require higher storage area and greater bandwidth.

Programming tools and the OS

You need to be sure that your website is uploaded through secure servers using the latest Operating System. Most web hosts run on a UNIX based operating system, usually Linux or BSD. For the running of various web applications you would require ASP, .NET, MS SQL, SBS and for these you need a Window based host.

Pricing Aspect

You need to compare pricing before you finalize a web hosting service. Some may provide you better services but at low pricing. It’s not always true that the best hosting services are always the most expensive. Do your research and then finalize.

Support, Security, Guaranteed uptime and Backups

Security and backups are two very important aspects that you need to consider. You should always choose a web hosting service with reliable telephone support. Some also offer 24/7 support through local or toll-free numbers. In case you are running an ecommerce website then security is one aspect that you just cannot discard. Your web hosting service provider should be such that they can monitor things round the clock and ensure no unwanted intruder can hack your site. After all it’s your website and it is really worth looking into this aspect of web hosting.

Are you Ready to Move to Multiple Domain Hosting?

Art — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 21:18:24 +0000

If you are a webmaster, you must be aware of shared hosting plans which are the least expensive method of hosting your site. Web hosting providers offer this service because you are only using a small amount of disc space and bandwidth shared with others. One issue with shared hosting is they typically only allow one domain under one account.

For those with only one website, this is not a problem. However, if you plan to expand and create a network of websites, this will be an issue. Instead of opening a new account for each site (which can become quite expensive), web hosting providers offer packages that allow you to host all websites under the same account. This is known as multiple domain hosting.

This will save you a great deal of money by allowing more flexibility with your sites without the extra fees. The types of websites you build are up to your discretion but generally the content should be related in some manner. That way it is much smoother when linking to your other sites and they will achieve a higher page rank.

Many multiple domain hosting providers offer Fantastico. This allows you to easily develop different types of websites including:

Classified ads
Blogs
Online directories

To keep the process as inexpensive as possible, you can register additional domain names through GoDaddy.com. They are among the cheapest on the internet. Once registered, acquire your DNS address and click on the “add-on domain” in your control panel. Then fill in the blanks with the new domains. Once complete, it takes approximately 48 hours for new websites to be recognized on the internet.

Other attributes you will want to setup in your new host include specific email addresses, databases, FTP accounts and subdirectories for each of your domains. Multiple domain name hosting plans usually start around $10 per month which is significantly cheaper than hosting each domain on a different account.

Multiple domain hosting is a wonderful option if you plan to expand your website to a network of sites. This is the cheapest, most efficient option available to those with growing needs. All major web hosting providers offer multiple domain hosting plans. It is always beneficial to conduct research and comparison shop prior to selecting a provider. This will ensure you will receive the best possible service to fulfill all of your business needs.

Shared Hosting – How Much Can You Afford to Share?

Art — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:50:37 +0000

Your website is the focal point of your online business, as it represents your online identity and reputation on a continual basis. The performance, appearance and presence of your site directly affect the way your visitors perceive the professionalism of your online business. Every site operates on a web server, and this server ultimately dictates the full functionality and performance limitations of every web page on the site. Every time a page is loaded a small burden is placed on the web server, and if the load is too heavy the site performance begins to suffer, in the form of slow page loads, and even site down time. The likelihood of this decreased site performance occurring depends entirely upon the kind of web server being used, as some are more powerful than others. Shared web servers are perhaps the least beneficial, simply because all of the server resources are shared amongst various sites simultaneously.

How Much Is Shared?

Fortunately, sensitive site information (such as financial data) is not shared between unrelated sites in a shared hosting plan. However all of the server resources, such as bandwidth, data transfer, and even storage space are shared with other users that are renting a hosting plan with your web host. Your site’s IP address is also shared with these users as well, which means that their actions may reflect on both the legal credibility and search engine ranking of your site. Since you are sharing all of these attributes with sites that are not under your control, it is possible that unforeseen circumstances could arise, such as being de-indexed from search engines, or even having your site taken offline temporarily.

How Much Can You Save?

The main reason why anyone would purchase a shared hosting plan would be to save money. However, when you factor in the issues that could result from sharing all of your server resources with dozens of other sites, it becomes clear that you may not be saving anything at all. In fact, the percentage of people that will eventually upgrade from a shared hosting plan is rather high. Therefore if you’re inevitably going to upgrade in the future, then there may be little sense in paying for a plan which will soon be obsolete. The truth is you can save a lot of time and money by starting with a plan that is right for you.

When Would Shared Hosting Be Optimal?

If you are operating a personal blog, or a .info domain that is not of high importance to you, then a shared hosting plan could accommodate your needs. Shared hosting is only recommended for individuals, and is not an ideal solution for the online business owner. If you are currently using a shared hosting account for your online business, you may want to consider switching to a VPS or Dedicated hosting account instead. Dedicated and VPS hosting plans offer flexibility, privacy and capabilities that cannot be found in any shared hosting service.

A Review of the cPanel Preference Menu

Art — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:39:54 +0000

The preference menu within the cPanel software interface is an area to change various settings allowing for further customization. This permits clients to view different features in a more comfortable environment.

When first entering the Preference Menu, there are two options:

The Getting Started Wizard
Other Features

The Getting Started Wizard presents a plethora of options which are the basic choices when first setting up a new account. These selections include:

Language
Introduction to Web Hosting
Web Disk Accounts
New Email Address Setup
Set Default Address
Webmail
Contact Information and Preferences
Style
Manage SSH Keys

The Language area allows for clients to change the default language setting. The Introduction to Web Hosting section contains information to assist the client with creating directories, retrieving files and using the file manager, web disk and FTP accounts. Web Disk Accounts is an application that assists with the manipulation and management of the website’s files.

New Email Address Setup allows the client to create new email accounts. Set Default Address requires the client to set an email address that will receive mail sent to an invalid address. Webmail is an email client that permits the webmaster access to all email accounts through a browser.

The Contact Information and Preferences area lets the client setup their contact information. The Style section is another method of customization allowing the webmaster to choose from several cPanel styles that change the interface. Finally the Manage SSH Keys area simply generates SSH keys that confirm specific computers can access the website’s data through an SSH session.

The second option is the Other Features area. Within this selection are several sections including:

Video Tutorials
Change Password
Update Contact Information
Change Style
Change Language
Shortcuts
Branding Editor

When clicking Video Tutorials, an area opens where the client can watch tutorials on three different categories: cPanel 11, Branding and Mail. The Change Password selection allows the webmaster to change their password. Update Style and Change Language are two customization areas that can also be accessed from the Getting Started Wizard.

The Shortcuts area is a method allowing the client to create quick shortcuts within the cPanel interface. Finally, the Branding Editor permits webmasters to create, edit and manage header and footer images within each theme to create website branding.

The cPanel Preference Menu offers many options for customization and improvement of the website and interface. These areas are helpful to both novice and veteran clients. Due to the numerous convenient functions, cPanel has become the most popular control panel available.

Virtual Web Hosting – What is it and Who Needs it?

Art — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:37:30 +0000

Virtual web hosting is a type of web hosting that facilitates the hosting of several domains on a single IP address by sharing resources such as memory and processor cycles on a virtual private server. It has recently become one of the most popular forms of web hosting available, as it is offers a mixture of affordability, flexibility and capability that is unrivaled in virtually any other web hosting solution. Many website owners use virtual private server hosting because it gives them remote access to their own server that can be used for multiple websites, yet they don’t need to make an extreme investment to use these resources.

What is a Virtual Private Server?

A virtual private server is the next best thing to a private server, and it does not require nearly as much capital as a private server. By using a virtual private server you don’t have to worry about any limits being imposed on your hosting account as far as your website resources are concerned. This means your needs will be definitively met with regards to bandwidth and disk space. In addition your site will be able to operate at peak performance virtually without limitation. Therefore you won’t have to concern yourself with constant upgrades or multiple hosting accounts unnecessarily.

Who Needs It?

If you’re a personal website owner with a blog or a personal site that does not contain many files, then you probably would not benefit much from a virtual private server. However, if you are a business owner that is looking to expand in the near future, then you may want to expand your horizons by considering a virtual web hosting service. Virtual Private Servers are especially beneficial to business owners because they provide comprehensive administrative rights to the user which gives them complete control over their business website.

A virtual web hosting plan is also more reliable than your standard shared web hosting plan as the customer support is more personalized and the web server is not being used by other websites. With shared hosting, the web server is being shared by other websites, and if these websites conduct illegal or questionable activities, it is not uncommon for the entire block of IP addresses to be brought down. This could result in down time and even the loss of many potential customers.

Choosing a Virtual Web Hosting Plan

Choosing a web hosting plan of any kind requires a thorough process of elimination. Through deductive reasoning and a bit of research you can find the information need to make an informed decision in a timely manner without hesitation. Perhaps the most important factor in any web hosting plan is the companies reliability and the support they provide their customers. Try giving each prospective company a call several times and see which one answers your queries as quickly and as friendly as possible. Since this will be your first private hosting experience you’ll need to be sure you have access to all of the information you need this first time around.

Web Hosting Plans: Disk Space and Bandwidth – Are They Really Unlimited ?

Art — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:40:20 +0000

Web hosting plans include many features, and often times the feature lists can be difficult to compare since there are so many aspects to consider. Perhaps the two most important attributes of a web hosting plan are the bandwidth and disk space. The bandwidth capacity determines how much information a website can send to their visitors during their viewing of the site. The disk space determines how many files you can store for your website. The bandwidth is usually limited by a network line that has a measurable transfer rate capacity due to it’s size. Likewise, the hard disk space is also limited by storage space and other technological limitations.

The problem with most web hosting plans is that they claim to offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space, however they simply cannot truly offer this as they are not equipped to do so. Even Internet Service Providers don’t make such claims, as they know it is not possible to give this type of service to every customer. So then why do so many web hosting companies promise unlimited features that they cannot accommodate for?

All You Can Eat?

Think of it this way – when you go to a buffet, you are promised all you can eat. This means you are entitled to an unlimited amount of food, as long as you can swallow it. However, this does not mean that you are going to eat all of the food! In fact, most of the people at the buffet are not going to eat more than two plates! The buffet advertises unlimited food, even though both the restaurant manager and the diners know that this is not truly possible. How does this relate to web hosting? Because it is the same concept- web hosts offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space to attract customers. At the same time, they know these customers cannot possibly use all of their bandwidth.

Competition and Marketing

Due to the competitive nature of the web hosting industry, web hosting companies will do whatever they can to outbid the competition for your business. Web hosts know that most users are not going to uses even half of their allocated bandwidth, so they can offer unlimited bandwidth plans since there are so many server resources left over all the time. The sad part is, if the customer does happen to go over this hidden bandwidth limit, the hosting company may shut down their website without warning. While this kind of unlimited plan may be suitable for some webmasters, a rapidly expanding business should know their bandwidth limits to prevent from receiving warning letters and abrupt termination of service from their web hosting service.

Conclusion

The saying “nothing is free” may be just as relevant as “nothing is unlimited.” When a web hosting company says they offer unlimited features, it may be best to speak with these web hosting company’s support staff to assure yourself that the features are actually unlimited.

Web Hosting Geeks' Blog » disk space

How Much RAM / Bandwidth / Disk Space Do I Really Need?

Related posts:

Guarantees – Separating Fact from Fiction

Related posts:

Web Hosting and Web Site Launch

Related posts:

Know How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Company

Related posts:

Web Hosting Guide

Related posts:

Are you Ready to Move to Multiple Domain Hosting?

Related posts:

Shared Hosting – How Much Can You Afford to Share?

Related posts:

A Review of the cPanel Preference Menu

Related posts:

Virtual Web Hosting – What is it and Who Needs it?

Related posts:

Web Hosting Plans: Disk Space and Bandwidth – Are They Really Unlimited ?

Related posts: