Some people who acknowledge that unlimited is an unacceptable word for describing bandwidth because it can be deceiving believe that the right term to use would be “unmetered.” But is it really?

What unmetered means for this context is “unmeasured.” The problem is many of the hosting companies that offer it mention explicitly that once an initial limited has been reached, that upon request at no charge you will be upgraded. So in fact they do measure your data traffic consumption. The thing that they don’t do, or at least claim not to, is placing a limit on your consumption. It is true that they don’t, at least not in a direct way.

Reasons Why Hosts Offer Unmetered Bandwidth
Businesses exist in order to make a profit. That is their purpose and employees are responsible for doing whatever is necessary to maximize profits.

How does offering something like unmetered bandwidth increase a company’s profits? It is through sheer volume. A significant increase in sales that have a small profit on each account potentially could translate into a higher amount of total profit.

For serious businesses offering unmetered bandwidth is a decision to gamble based on statistics, which is the cornerstone for all overselling decisions.

However a way has been devised so that the hosts don’t have to take the risk. There are certain requirements that websites must meet in order to receive unmetered bandwidth.

So why would unmetered bandwidth sell more than a quota would? It all comes down to perceived value. It isn’t what you sell, it’s what a customer thinks they are buying. Targeted customers feel they are getting more for less. Unmetered bandwidth is supposed to provide more than fixed quota.

Another reason that customers sometimes give is they don’t have to worry about getting charged when they exceed their allotment of bandwidth. It is a kind of guarantee that getting a higher amount of traffic to their website won’t result in higher charges. Once again it’s risk reversal. At least that is how certain customers see it.

The ultimate sales proposition: worry free hosting. Just sign up and you won’t ever have to worry over hosting again. You will get everything that you need for one fixed fee.

This type of service/product offer has a target market. It isn’t hard to realize that the market that is targeted is individuals who have websites that won’t take full advantage of the offer.

In order to ensure that things stay manageable, certain kinds of websites usually aren’t eligible to receive unmetered bandwidth:

* Websites offering file downloads (mp3s, video, software)
* Websites hosting image galleries (notorious for high server resources and high bandwidth usage)
* Websites with popular forums
* Portals and other kinds of social communities
* Adults websites
* Chat sites

Another common restraint to see is that 90% of files have to be linked from HTML, ASP or PHP kinds of pages, meaning that the website needs to be content driven.

Some hosting companies have more restrictions than others, meaning that in order to protect themselves they go to much greater lengths. Others take on more chances.

A lot of these restrictions also are used by hosts who offer unlimited bandwidth. That isn’t surprising since unmetered bandwidth for shared hosting comes from the unlimited bandwidth concept.

If these restrictions are examined, it’s have to imagine any website using up large amounts of bandwidth, and therefore taking advantage of the offer of unmetered bandwidth, that doesn’t fall into one of the above categories. So what is the point?

The point is actually a simple one. Unmetered bandwidth would take overselling to an entirely new level. Because hosting companies need to ensure profitability as well as long term sustainability they take some serious safety precautions. However, the more restrictions there are the more it feels like empty talk. They make it almost impossible for any customer to actually be able to take the host up on their offer of unmetered bandwidth.

It’s not just due to the above limitations. If a website was able to get through all the rules and somehow be eligible to receive unmetered bandwidth, the hosting company would still stop them from taking advantage of this offer.

One clause gives hosting companies all the power. That clause is the one called server resources abuse. If your website happens to use up too much memory and CPU power to the point that it affects the performance of the server’s other websites, the hosting company will suspend it.

A question you may be asking yourself is why a hosting company would go through so much trouble to specify which kinds of websites aren’t eligible if they have that clause.

In order to answer the question we need to look at what effects those limitations have. The only websites qualifying for the offer have a very little chance of going over more than few GBs each month. There is also very little chance of these websites going over the threshold for resources abuse. That means the clause hardly ever needs to get used. This is great from the hosting company’s point of view.

Customers usually have no idea what is contained in the TOS. The clause is shocking to them, particularly since with most of today’s control panels there isn’t any way of verifying the claim made by the host. Out of shock, these customers might voice publicly their dissatisfaction that their website was suspended and that they are being blackmailed into upgrading their hosting account. Most hosts could do without this type of publicity.

How do hosting companies explain this? One of the ideas is that limits on bandwidth aren’t meaningful anymore. What is more meaningful are things like memory and CPU usage. In terms of unmetered bandwidth what ultimately limits consumption of bandwidth is how much of the server’s resources are used.

I wouldn’t have a problem with this change as long as:

1. Hosting companies didn’t monitor individual consumption of data transfer

2. Resource usage was visible and measured inside the control panel, allowing users to know at any given time if they had used too many resources for the given time period. In addition, users should have a guarantee of a certain level or share of resources.

The whole idea of unmetered can be called into dispute if the above first condition isn’t met. If you offer unmetered and then meter all your users consumption then why are you calling it unmetered? Some may say that’s just semantics. Maybe.

However in terms of semantics, unmetered bandwidth in the way it is advertised currently is basically unlimited bandwidth that has been repackaged into a somewhat nicer and less deceiving wrapper.

Bandwidth allowances have become so huge that the quota war on bandwidth has started to not make much sense, particularly since this war has been fueled through overselling and not real cost decreases.

Instead of monthly bandwidth increases, in an attempt that is never ending to be cheaper than competitors or to just try to keep up, some people might come to the conclusion to just call it unlimited or unmetered and just be done.

In part this is what has happened in the trend towards unmetered bandwidth. The overselling limits have been pushed many times, along with the bandwidth quotas. “No boundary” will become the next limit that is used.

An idea that I do like is limiting shared hosting based on resources used rather than bandwidth. Unfortunately it is tough breaking the bandwidth measurement standard.

Plans being limited based on resources instead of bandwidth would move the industry forward. It would make a huge difference between what has been advertised as unlimited bandwidth and a new idea that could be referred to as shared hosting that had unmetered bandwidth as well as specified server resources.

Let’s see if we can weigh unmetered bandwidth and benefit from it as customers.

The cost of unmetered bandwidth is usually about $10 from hosts that specialize in low cost shared hosting. The major benefit that unmetered hosting provides is not having to worry that small websites will exceed their quota and have to pay a huge amount for excessive bandwidth.

However since most sites qualifying for unmetered bandwidth are not likely to exceed 5 GB data transfer in a month, you could achieve the same effect by purchasing a hosting plan that offers 10GB worth of monthly data transfer for around $10.

Experience tells us that hosts that charge more for every GB of data transfer provide better overall service. The $1/GB ratio of data transfer often is considered the point at which a host is able to still make profit and not oversell.

The only other possible way to get more from a plan that has unmetered bandwidth is by having a website fitting the restrictions and managing to consume a high bandwidth amount while at the same time using low server resource amounts.

Personally, I am not in favor of the current form of unmetered bandwidth plans. If I had to choose between a plan suiting the needs of my website and one that came with unmetered bandwidth, definitely I would choose a plan that fit my bandwidth needs.

Everyone can choose their own point of view and priorities. To me unmetered bandwidth for sharing hosting isn’t currently the revolutionary breakthrough that I was expecting. I am not waiting around for the ultimate offer in budget hosting. I am waiting for changes to be made in how server resources are sold.

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However, asking questions by email or some other means can still provide potential customers will valuable information about a hosting service. The questions should be sent to the company’s sales department and not to their support department.

The purpose of emailing presales questions to a hosting company will provide you as a potential customer with the opportunity for measuring things such as how fast their response is, how accurate and detailed their responses are, as well as their attitude toward potential customers.

Many times responses coming from a sales department will not be as fast as a response coming from a support department. Some hosting companies may not answer answer inquiries to their sales department on weekends but have support available during these times.

As a rule of thumb, responses on email inquiries made to a sales department shouldn’t take more than 24 hours. The sooner you get a response the better.

The first step to take is to email the company with a few basic questions. Ask things that are fairly general but still important such as how long has the company been in business.

This first email gives you the opportunity to introduce yourself as well as see what their initial reaction is. Do they really want your business? Do they provide careful and detailed answers to your questions? Are they polite to you? Do they use correct English?

If they do a good job answering your questions on the first email, then it makes sense to send a second email.

In your second email you can ask them whether the features they include provide you with everything you need for getting your website to work. It is very important to tell the host about some of the details concerning your websites such as what scripts you are using and what programming language they were written in, how many visitors you average online at any given time, and how much bandwidth is used. Websites that are very busy use a lot of resources and aren’t suited any longer for shared environments and need their own servers. If you are just starting out you won’t have any statistics to go by, and it will be all guess work.

Don’t ask questions that are answered already on the hosting company’s website. They may not want to do business with you. Inattentive, lazy customers are not desirable. Some business actually choose their customers. Then again you may want to include a couple of questions that were answered already as a test to see if their staff is knowledgeable.

If any new questions come as a result of the discussion, you should send another email or call the company and discuss things by phone.

Questions You Should Ask

Here’s a complete list of questions to ask a hosting company. The harder the questions are the more respect you will generally get from a good company, whereas scammers will lose interest trying to keep up with your questions.

1. Does the company provide uptime statistics available from Alertra or other third party service? Ask for a link so you can easily view them.
Good hosting companies keep track of the uptime on their servers to verify that their uptime guarantee has been met, to be alerted when any downtime does occur, and to defend themselves against customers who give false complaints about downtime.

Two important things are how often the monitoring service checks the servers statuses and how long of a history there is for uptime records. The more frequent the checks are, the more accurate their uptime records will be.

The longer the company’s uptime history is the better. It’s easy to attain 100% uptime in one month, but a two year 99.95% uptime is a lot harder to achieve.

Some hosting companies monitor their servers in-house and don’t have an easy way of making their reports public. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are trying to hide something.

2. How long has the company been in business?
Like any other industry, experience counts for something when it comes to web hosting. However there are two things that needed to be separated: individual experience and corporate experience. There are businesses themselves that have been around for a long time giving them experience, and there are also new companies that are formed by people who have a lot of experience from working in the web hosting business for a very long time. In both cases the company has experience, although in the second scenario it is harder to prove.

3. How many employees does the company have?
Having a large number of employees can often provide greater dependability. There is less of chance that the hosting company will disappear over night. However, it is hard to verify the answer to this question.

4. Is support and/or sales outsourced or is it all provided in-house?
Many hosting companies outsource all or part of their support, and sometimes sales as well. How this works out depends on how professional and organized their suppliers are.

The rationale for outsourcing is that it is less expensive and these cost savings can be passed along to the customers. It is also a way for gaining a competitive edge. Some hosting companies do very well using outsourced support while others fail at it. The same can be said with in-house staff though.

It’s still a good question for you to ask. A hosting company that honestly tells you upfront that they outsource is being sincere which goes along with being honest.

5. For support issues, what’s the expected time for an initial response as well as average time for final resolution?
You won’t really know whether they are telling you the truth, but you will be able to compare the results you get with what their claims are.

Email auto responders and automated answering machines shouldn’t count as initial responses. Those are just automated confirmations and nothing else.

6a. Are you using a reseller account to sell your services?
Many hosting companies frown on this question. For a host selling from their reseller accounts it’s one of the questions they dread getting the most. Even hosts not selling from a reseller account may argue that reseller status doesn’t really mean anything and that it is the service level that characterizes whether a host is a good or bad one. I do agree with this, but only up to a point.

The reseller’s business, unfortunately, depends on the upstream provider’s quality of service. In order to maximize profits, many resellers choose low quality hosts which over the long run may not turn out too well. If the server goes down, all the reseller can do is ask for the matter to be resolved. They can not act on their own.

6b. Who is your host?
This question is the one resellers fear most of all. Don’t expect to get an answer. It’s an unfair question and it’s only natural for them to not share the information. If they were to tell you the name of their provider, in theory you could get the hosting service cheaper. All of their advertising efforts to get you to visit their website would be a complete waste.

7. How secure will my credit card information be?

8. Do you own your data center?
Most hosting companies marketing shared hosting rent servers from larger providers with their own data centers. It’s a major investment to own a data center. It makes sense for regular hosting companies to rent their servers until their business gets to be a certain size. Some hosting customers may not like this added layer. The reason for this is that the host has to depend on the staff of the data center for certain things.

9. What ways do I have for contacting your support team?
The most common ways for contacting support include live chat, instant messaging, phone, forum, support ticket system, help desk, and email. Usually the more methods the better.

Some people think that providing phone support is a sign that the company is serious. I think any business should provide a phone number for contact, but not necessarily as a way to contact support. With the internet there are lots of other ways for contacting a host.

10. Does the company have a money back guarantee? What conditions must be met to be eligible?

11. What is the company’s uptime guarantee? If the company fails to meet the guarantee, what form of compensation will I receive?

12. Will I have control panel access? Which control panel is offered?
It would be very rare for a host to not offer control panel access. Choose a host that does offer one and one that you are used to.

13. Is the company’s support free?
Although it is rare, there are some hosting companies that do charge for it. There are also some hosts that don’t even offer support.

14. Is customer support available 24/7?
This question includes what the company’s definition is of 24/7 support. Some people really want to have 24/7 phone support. If this is important to you, look for a host that offers it.

15. In terms of the server, what type and version of software is installed?
Usually you want the latest version, but a host may postpone their upgrades at times to wait until the bugs are worked out in new versions of software. If you do need a certain version of MySql, PHP, or something specific you should ask to make sure it is available.

16. What are the servers specs? What are the specs for the server where my website will be located?
Some people want to have their websites hosted on well equipped, high end machines. They figure that more powerful machines will have better performance. However, on powerful machines, hosts will often put more websites on them which can diminish any advantages that the higher computer power could bring. However if the machine is configured properly and is not overloaded it still might be faster.

You want your site to be hosted using a machine that the hosting company is used to. If your site is going to be hosted using a powerful machine that the host hasn’t used before they may overestimate the machine’s power and tend to overload it and again wipe out any potential advantages.

17. How many websites are put on your servers?
This number usually varies quite a bit, depending on the types of websites, the machines and other factors. Servers that contain websites that are more CPU intensive will not be able to handle as many websites.

18. What is the maximum CPU usage amount that I’m allowed on a regular basis? What is your resources abuse policy and how to do you treat offending websites?
This question is very important. You should compare answers from different hosts to see which company provides you with the best answer.

The best case scenario is when offending websites are moved temporarily to a free server or one that is almost free. Then the owner is notified and they are asked to upgrade to a dedicated or semi dedicated solution.

19. What is the average load on the servers? What is the average load for the server where my website will be hosted? What about the average CPU usage?
Compare hosts you are considering. The lower the numbers are the better.

20. How long does it take to create an account?
Some hosts advertise instant activation. Others take time in creating new accounts. This may be to ensure that the buyer isn’t fraudulent. Don’t be offended if this is the case. It’s always good to know when hosts make sure that unworthy individuals don’t get access to their servers. They could be spammers or hackers, and it’s better not to have them as virtual neighbors.

21. Will my account be scalabe? How are upgrades handled? Are there any additional fees other than paying a higher monthly price?
It is very important that you have the ability to upgrade your plan if you need to.

22. What is the charge for excess space and bandwidth?
Usually getting a sudden burst in traffic is something to be happy about. However if you happen to exceed your bandwidth it could be expensive if your host charges a lot for this.

23. Do you have a limit on daily bandwidth?
A majority of hosting companies only have monthly bandwidth limits. It’s a lot easier to accurately estimate how much bandwidth will be needed for a month than it is to estimate it on a daily basis. So it’s important to make sure your host doesn’t put a cap on daily hosting bandwidth. Be sure to carefully read how excess usage is handled.

24. Are there file size limits?
Most hosts do not limit file sizes that can be hosted on your account. However, if you are planning to host large files be sure to ask about this.

25. How ofter are website backups made? Are the backups stored off or on site?
The more often backups are made the better. It is also better for backups to be store off site in the event there is a fire or another disaster at the data center.

26. Is there a fee charged for setups?
During hosting’s early days, it was normal to be charged a setup fee. One of the reasons was it wasn’t as easy to set an account up then as it is now.

Setup fees today are often used to encourage longer commitment periods. If you pay on a monthly or quarterly basis you pay more than what you pay on a yearly basis and you may also be charged a large setup fee. What this does is make people seriously consider going for the yearly payment fee.

It’s usually safer to pay by the month and then once you are confident that the host is a good one you might want to consider paying on a yearly basis to save some money. If customer feedback is really exceptional and you are confident the host is a good one, you might want to pay on a yearly basis in the very beginning. Just be aware that if you do this that you are assuming risk.

The money back guarantee usually covers only the first thirty days. Not too many hosts prorate their refund. If the service starts to go bad after you’ve had it for thirty days and you paid for the whole year you might be stuck.

27. How many months will need to be paid in advance?
Some hosts don’t offer monthly payment plans or just offer quarterly, semiannual or yearly payment plans. The price may be shown on a monthly basis, but then the asterisk points out that the figure only applies with a yearly payment. Be careful and be sure to ask first before paying if there is anything that is unclear.

28. Does the price include the domain?
Sometimes a domain gets included, particularly if you pay for longer time periods. However, usually I advise not buying a domain name from your hosting company or get it bundled together with your hosting fee. It’s a lot safer buying your domain name from well known registrars. This will ensure that your name is associated with the domain name and you will have complete and direct control over it.

There are some unscrupulous hosts that buy your requested domain name and allow you to use it. However they own the domain. If you ever want to switch to a new host you will find yourself stuck because the hosting company won’t give you your domain.

29. Is there a free trial available for testing the service?
Not too many hosts offer free trials because hackers and spammers can expose them to all sorts of problems.

30. Is adult content allowed to be hosted on the servers?
This could be important if you are wanting to upload adult content or if you are against sharing server space with adult websites. Some people are convinced that adult websites will attract more hackers which could lead to the server being compromised more frequently. However, I haven’t seen any serious research done on this topic.

31. If there are specific scripts that you use (shopping carts, forums, etc), be sure to ask if you will be allowed to used them.
Certain scripts may not be allowed to run on some hosts machines, so you need to ask.

32. Can I use a shared hosting account to run my scripts?
If you have an active website, let them know how busy the website is as well as the scripts you are using. This information will help the host estimate what your resource usage will be and let your known if a shared hosting environment will work for your website.

33. Will I have Telnet and/or SSH access?
Some hosts don’t give customers access to such powerful features with shared hosting accounts, particularly with SSH which can be potentially dangerous in the hands of the wrong person.

34. Is there a site builder available?
A site builder can be very useful if your website isn’t built yet or you don’t have a lot of HTML knowledge. Different site builders have their own strengths and weaknesses. Before you buy anything ask to see a demo.

35. Are there any limits on the number of emails that can be sent in an hour?
If you happen to have any kind of mailing list, this could be very important. Many hosts do have limits in order to prevent resource abuse and sending spam.

36. Is Raw logs access available? Will a traffic analyzer be installed?

37. What forms of payment are accepted?
Most hosts will accept PayPal, checks, and money orders along with credit cards but you may need to ask if your preferred payment method isn’t listed on the website.

38. Read the TOS carefully and if there is anything you don’t understand, ask about it.

39. How many clients does the host have?
I usually don’t consider number of clients to be an important measure of how serious the host is. The number of clients also might not necessarily be equal to how many websites the company hosts.

40. How many servers does the company operate?
How well these servers are managed is even more important.

41. Do you have a list of customers I can get feedback from.
Due to customer privacy reasons, most serious hosts won’t provide this information. However some hosts may have a list of customers who agree to give their websites as examples.

42. Thousands of hosting companies are available. Why should I choose you?
This question is an important one. Can the host convince you they are the right company for you?

This is a long list of questions and you may a few more of your own that you would like to add. It is best to get as many answers as your possibly can to questions about a hosting company. However you may want to choose just the questions that are most important to you.

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If people don’t even know your website exists then they can’t visit or learn about the things you are offering. That it why is it just as important to market your website both online as well as offline as it is to market your service or product.

It can be easier to promote your site than you might think. Here are a few suggestions.

Offline Marketing
Website owners often forget about the options for marketing their websites offline. However you need to make sure your website is visible in places where your target audience lives which means marketing offline.

* All of your marketing materials should prominently display your website’s URL and entice people to visit your website. Marketing materials can include newsletters, folders, flyers, brochures, envelopes, letterhead and business cards.

* You can also have direct mail postcards with your web address boldly printed on the front. Sometimes just printing your website’s URL in large letters and in an attention getting style is enough to get the recipient to turn your postcard over to read your other information.

* Press releases can be issued when you have something newsworthy or new to announce on your website. You might be offering a free e-course or free report or some approach to your market that is unique and that the media finds interesting.

* You can use on-hold messages for when your customers are waiting on your phone line to direct people to your website, especially systems that use an automatic attendant. If you use live attendants you can also direct people over to your website. Be sure that the attendants are familiar with what information is relevant and available to your callers on the website.

* If you ever do radio interviews, find ways of dropping your URL into the conversation. This would apply to any interviews with reporters, editors or producers.

* You can also write feature articles or guest columns for publications related to your field of expertise. Usually you can include a few lines at the end of the article or column about your area of experience as well as ways of contacting you. Here is where you can include your email and website addresses.

* Another great way of circulating your website’s address are advertising specialties. This can include pencils, pens, mouse pads, coffee mugs and key chains as well as other types of apparel with your identity or logo on it.

* Your URL can also be promoted offline using the following: printed Ads, Yellow page ads, t-shirts, license plate frames, golf bags and balls, billboards, vehicles and fax cover sheets.

Online Marketing
In conjunction with your offline marketing efforts, you can also market your website online. Here are a few ideas to help you get started.

* Mention your website frequently in your site’s web copy. Even though the visitors have already landed on your site, this well help to reinforce your site in the minds of your readers and also help with your search engine optimization efforts.

* Make mention of your website and include the URL in your signature with all of your forum, discussion and news group postings.

* Ask your business partners, advisors, board members and marketing partners to list your website on their websites.

* Use online articles and press releases using the same method discussed above in the Offline Marketing section.

* Use pay-per-click marketing to advertise your website

* Use banner advertising on related sites

* Advertise in online directories

* Mention your website in your email signatures

When it comes to both online and offline marketing, be creative. Sometimes some of the best marketing merges out of unique, extreme and wild ideas that have not occurred to your competitors.

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When a website has SSL, the site’s URL will start with ‘https’ instead of the usual ‘http.’ The extra s indicates that the website is secure. This help increase visitor confidence in your website.

Why SSL is Necessary
Two different kinds of keys are used with SSL protocol for encrypting data being transmitted in order to ensure it is secure. Visitors can see the public key. The private key is only visible to the data’s recipient. SSL encryption ensures that confidential and private information remains safe and doesn’t get into the wrong hands.

If your website is an e-commerce site where customers are paying using their credit card, it’s vital that the information from their credit card is secured and that it is not misused in any way. The only way you can ensure this is by having a secure website. SSL offers this to you.

Even if your website isn’t an e-commerce site, but you collect information from your website visitors that is confidential such as contact numbers, addresses and names you still need to have a secure site with SSL for ensuring their safety and privacy.

SSL Certificates
It’s usually not required to have SSL certification if the payments processed on your website are done by third party vendors like Paypal. If you do use e-commerce payment gateways, SSL certificates are absolutely necessary.

There are some hosting services that provide shared SSL certifications for their customers. The problem is when a visitor lands on a site with a SSL certification that is shared they receive an error message stating that it isn’t a secure website because the certificate’s validity is in question. Visitors to the site may leave these websites thinking they are unsecure and go to other sites with their business that do have their own secured SSL certifications.

Therefore, if you want to retain visitors as well as paying customers, you need to get private SSL certification of your own and not rely on shared SSL provided by your hosting company.

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Many website owners focus their efforts more on developing, maintaining and enhancing their websites. There are lots of things that are involved in managing a website. The process is very time consuming, leaving very little time for concentrating on things like the technical administration of a website including email management, security, fixing bugs, email administration and database management.

We all know how important it is but often website owners aren’t willing to pay the cost for technical assistance, particularly when they have a new or struggling business.

Some see consulting with an expert to be a waste of money and time on something that could end up costing a few dollars to over $100 an hour. The whole process gets even more complicated when service providers charge heavy fees for poor skills and low quality work.

Hiring permanent employees to do the technical work means taking on salaries, employment taxes as well as other potential problems. One other option is paying to have the server and website administrated by the hosting service where the website is hosted. This costs less. One potential drawback is that the hosting service staff may be loaded down with doing similar work for many others sites, leaving little time to pay attention to your website.

For new and beginner website owners, the site administration technical requirements can be difficult. However, once some familiarity and experience is gained, it can become a simple process. In a majority of cases administration will be pretty basic and the tasks repetitive. This can all be learned fairly easily. One way to get started without incurring any cost or risk is to practice on a free hosting or test site.

Once you have passed your first hurdle, the remainder of your administration work will become fairly easy. You might also find it interesting. When you handle this work yourself, you have more control over the total product.

You also can be a better judge than a consultant or hired staff when you have learned through real life experience. It is easier making a judgment after you have the experienced solving problems yourself instead of someone else providing an assessment for you. You can also judge better how much time it will take to fix a problem rather than relying on an estimate that your service provider gives you.

There are lots of unseen factors contributing to the proper functioning of a website. However, the systems can also create problems at any time. That’s why it’s a better option to handle situations yourself rather than relying on a consultant or hired employee. It can save you money and also improve your expertise.

At the same time, it’s important not to lose focus on your business’ most profitable activities. If the time you need to spend on your other business activities is more profitable than hiring someone as a system administrator, you should do that.

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It may be because many who are looking for hosting take a lot of things at face value. Many consider expensive, beautiful and complicated web design to be a sign of success and seriousness.

However, beautiful web design doesn’t really have much to do with hosting service quality. Nice web design basically indicates that the hosting company does know what great websites look like and made sure they had a site that was good looking.

What some people may consider exquisite web design might be perceived by others as ugly. It is a matter of individual experience, background and taste.

Websites with nice designs are not always expensive because they may not always be unique. Most hosting companies generally start out small as a one man operation using a reseller account or perhaps an inexpensive dedicated server. Some thought may be given to the website’s appearance, but the owner may have a limited web design budget because most of the company’s money is being allocated to things that are related directly to hosting.

Many new hosts use an inexpensive website template. Cheap templates don’t have to be ugly. Even ones that cost less than $30 can actually be quite nice.

Many hosts choose a web design with a flash presentation. Supposedly this helps to make the site appear to be more professional. This may have been true a long time ago, however today it is quite kitsch. The same is true of the server pictures taken from all different angles.

A trained eye will be able to see these things. However the average customer won’t have a clue that behind what appears to be a very carefully designed website with lots of color and flash, and speaking of backbone connections and data centers, may only be one person trying to make a little money.

Many of the new hosts will purchase their website templates from TemplateMonster.com and other places. Visit the site and look over the templates. Try to get a feel of what the templates look like so you can take advantage of this knowledge.

Some hosts have come to the realization that web design is very important for driving sales, projecting a successful image, branding and establishing trust. This is why so many hosts pay for an original website design when they are able to afford it.

One web design company that many hosts like to use for their advanced web design work is a company called Ceonex. They are able to not only do web design but optimized websites for producing sales as well. At least that is what they claim to be able to do.

Some have noticed that websites that are designed by Ceonex tend to look very similar. On some of the hosting websites it’s easy to find identical objects, indicating that some of their work is recycled.

However, a Ceonex web design, including the marketing studies, can cost as much as $20,000-$30,000, indicating that the hosting company wants to set themselves apart. As a customer, this only goes to show how hosts will go to very great lengths for projecting a certain image as well as gain a competitive edge.

However the money that is spent benefits the hosting company and not the client. Expensive web design is making the statement: look what we can do… to maximize sales that is. However, another thing that one can interpret is that the company plans to be around awhile.

A company isn’t going to spend thousands of dollars on web design and then suddenly be out of business right away. In addition, if the company is successful and well established their expensive, new web design may have been purchased to reveal their new, successful status.

When you have the money it’s practically a necessity to move into a larger house. You may think only snobs do that, but that’s not true. You would expect someone with lots of money to maintain a standard of living that as higher. It is human nature after all.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are hosts that have no budget or idea of how things really work over the internet, but still insist on having a business that is not only web based but is also a hosting business. Then they try to build their website by themselves or get a friend to do it.

The end result is quite often a website that is amateurish or just plain ugly. Anyone with only a basic understanding of the internet would know better. It is usually pretty easy to spot outdated or ugly web designs if you have experience surfing the net.

A hosting company should have a good understanding of how the internet operates and have an eye for good web design. A free template that looks halfway decent would be better than an original, ugly design.

Unprofessional web designs basically show a serious lack of professionalism as well as thoughtfulness and thoroughness. If they don’t care about their own website, why would you think they care about things like server security? I’d rather pass on a host that has an unprofessional website rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt and then later getting burned. There are a lot of other hosts that are available, so why take a risk when there are so many to choose from.

Another potential sign that the hosting company lacks professionalism is repeated spelling and grammar mistakes. It can also be a sign that the company is careless and lacks respect towards their potential customers. Poor web design and spelling errors often go hand in hand, making it easy to spot hosting companies that you wouldn’t want to do business with.

In general, website design is really marketing related. There isn’t any direct relation between web design and quality service. Good website design doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with trustworthy, quality hosting. Website design doesn’t reliably measure quality of service. It is better not to even consider this factor at all except when there is a blatantly unprofessional design. I expect the web design to be decent because I think it shows that the company is thoughtful and respects their potential customers.

When making your decision about hosting look for facts instead. Are the company’s customers happy? Do they deliver on their promises? These are the kinds of important things you should look for.

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Once people have these basic things set up they tend to forget about a small but quite important detail. If you have a business website or are serious about a personal website, you need to keep an eye over your hosting company at all times. Verifying that your website is online on a daily basis is not enough. To be sure that the website is up a majority of time, server uptime needs to seriously be monitored. If you carefully monitor this, you will be alerted when your website goes down. You will be able to contact your host immediately when the downtime occurs, which can potentially decrease the amount of time that your website is down. It will also allow you claim compensation from the hosting company if they fail to meet their guaranteed uptime.

Hosted Monitoring is the simplest form of uptime monitoring. A third party service does the monitoring for you and lets you know whether you website is up and running online or not. There are certain advantages that hosted monitoring has over monitoring that is in-house. In order to understand what those advantages are you first need to understand how the monitoring is conducted.

To verify that your website is online, the only thing you need to do is visit the website. When you see the page appear that tells you your website is online. When you use a monitoring service, a computer program running on one of the service’s computers visits a page of your website periodically.

This sounds like a simple process, but it can easily get complicated. About 99% of the time when you are visiting a website you access it through the use of HTTP, a communication protocol.

In order to be able to communicate using HTTP, a program needs to be properly functioning on your hosting company’s machine where your website is. Visiting your website verifies the machine is on as well as that the HTTP or web server is up and running.

There are many software servers that need to run at the same time on the machine. Emails get transmitted through the use of special protocols such as IMAP, SMTP, POP and for file transfer the special protocol is FTP. There are other protocols that transmit files, however FTP is specialized.

Other services need to be tested as well like PHP. If you have a website that is based in PHP you will need a way of determining whether or not PHP running, If it isn’t your website pages won’t appear correctly to your site visitors.

Server uptime is actually a very complex thing. There is uptime for HTTP, POP/IMAP and FTP. Uptime could be redefined as the total of minutes when all of the services that the host promises are all available, not just when a website is available to be visited.

In order to really monitor uptime and truly be able to say that a website is up and running, more tests need to be conducted.

There are different monitoring companies that offer different kinds of services. A majority of these services let you choose which of these uptimes you wanted monitored such as HTTP, email, ftp, etc.

One very important feature of uptime monitoring is how frequent the tests are run. More frequent monitoring is a lot more exact, however it will also be more expensive.

If you have a small budget or your website is not of a mission critical nature, you could even choose a free monitoring service. It’s better than having nothing. If you do have a mission critical website you will want a service that checks your uptime on a frequent basis, such as every ten minutes.

One of the main advantages of hosted monitoring is that these services monitor uptime by using more than just one server and the servers are in different locations all over the world using different networks. When checking uptime using one computer from one Internet connection, your particular network could be down or maybe your website can’t be reached due to your ISP. If you decide to use a monitoring service be sure it uses multiple servers that are in different locations.

An additional important feature that a monitoring company can provide is multiple contact methods for notifying you in the event your website goes down. You may wished to be notified via phone, email, SMS, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, MSN, or pager.

Finding the right monitoring service for you can be just as difficult as finding the right hosting service. Alertra is one hosted monitoring service that has received a lot of positive reviews. They offer a free trial. A majority of monitoring services do offer free trials. There are also some that offer free basic services. These usually only check HTTP.

A few basic free services include siteuptime.com (HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP) and websitepulse.com (HTTP). Websitepulse also offers a free two week trial for services that have a value as much as $75. Host-tracker.com, montastic.com, serviceuptime.com, logicreach.com, uppanel.com, basicstate.com and unialert.com are all quite good. These all allow you to monitor your site quite frequently, especially when you consider that they are free. If you do use free service, for the best results use several simultaneously. The quality of these services can fluctuate, but taken together should alert you of any downtimes that are significant. Pingdom.com is a paid service that is very accurate.

Be sure that the email address you use for sending downtime notices is reliable and not hosted on your website’s server.

You can also use paid or free software to do your own uptime monitoring in house. Zabbix.sourceforge.net is free, open source software that you can try. Other software includes Netstatus Monitor 2.0, Nagios.org, Rushland.net, and Advanced HostMonitor.

Whatever you decide to do, be sure that you monitor the uptime for your website. It’s important to know that your website is online and also to verify that your hosting company is providing good service. If you can’t afford to pay for a monitoring service use a free one. You really can’t just rely on manual monitoring that you do on your own.

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Understanding Ruby
Ruby is a lot like Perl, Python, or PHP. It other words, it’s a programming language. However, those who use Ruby feel this particular programming language contains more powerful and sophisticated syntax over other programming languages. Ruby language appears to combine some of the best that other languages offer. For example, the ease of use of Python, Perl’s simplicity, and Smalltalk’s conceptual elegance. The Ruby language originated during the early 1990s. However during the past few years it has started to become very popular among programmers from all around the world.

Understanding Rails
Rails was written with Ruby and is a web application framework that is open source. A program’s framework is all the reusable code and components that are able to used in the main application. It is basically a type of support structure that can be used for any program. There are many frameworks that are available for programmers to use. However, the Rails framework has become increasingly popular for several reasons.

When the framework Ruby on Rails is used, it takes less than one tenth of the amount of time it would taking for developing the web application if the regular Java framework was used. The main reason for this is because of Ruby language being used when writing the framework. Most of the other languages don’t allow for many things that are very simple and easy to do when the Ruby language is used. Because Rails was written using Ruby, it is able to take complete advantage of Ruby’s features. There are two other major guiding principles that make Ruby on Rails much faster and simpler to use.

* Less software. Less code is needed for creating a web application. Because less code needs to be written, it takes less time to develop an application. In addition when you have less code it’s easier to learn, understand and maintain than with more complex coding.

* Convention over configuration. In Rails there aren’t any lengthy XML configuration files. Instead a few simple programming conventions are built right into Rails enabling it to figure out what it needs using a process of discovery and reflection. Whatever it is that Rails needs to have knowledge about, it discover it automatically from the web application code that is running the database. This leaves you with almost nothing to do.

In summary, the Ruby on Rails framework creates web applications written with Ruby programming language.

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The following is a brief tutorial on search engine optimization basics. We use many of these techniques every day to optimize websites and stay ahead of the competition.

Better Rankings in 4 Steps

Step 1. Select The Right Keywords
The first important step is to select the right keywords for basing your website optimization around. The best approach is usually not to choose generic or general keywords. It is usually better to focus on more specific, niche keywords that directly relate to your service or product.

In order to do this you need to target a suitable market, compete with fewer websites that are targeting the same or similar keywords as you, and optimize for the keywords that searchers actually use when they perform their searches.

How you target a suitable market depends on what specific services and products you offer and on your website. You need to be as specific as possible when it comes to your keywords. Also keep in mind that people don’t usually search using single keywords. Most search phrases are 3-5 words long.

For example, if you were trying to optimize a web development website based in Dublin, Ireland you would want to use keywords like “web development Dublin” or “web development services Ireland.”

In order to figure out the number of websites competing with you on your keywords, just do a Google search and take note of the number of results that are returned. The more sites there are competing with you on your keywords, the more difficult it will be for you to get your website on Google’s first page of the search results.

To get a rough idea of the number of people searching for your keywords that you would like to optimize your website for, the Google External Keyword tool can be used. It isn’t exact but will give you a fairly good estimate. You will also be provided with other keywords in a list that are similar to the one that you enter into the keyword tool. It can a great way of finding more keywords to use when optimizing your website.

A general guideline you can go by is to use a different search phrase for each page of your website. Your search phrases should consist of 2 or 3 keywords that are highly targeted.

Step 2. Title Tag and URL
Two of the major factors determining your website’s ranking in Google are your title tag and domain name. Having your main keywords in your domain name can help to get your website ranked higher for that keyword. Some people might think that having keywords in our website’s domain name looks unprofessional or our domain name is already registered. An alternative and useful tactic is to add keywords into your page names.

Title tags are also very important. Using your keywords in the title tags can significantly improve your Google rankings. However, it can sometimes be a bit more difficult to balance keyword density with professionalism when using the title tags. Try to get your keywords as close to beginning of the title tag as you can.

Step. 3 Keyword Density and H1 Tags
These days the <h1> tag isn’t used as much in stylesheets as it once was. The ranking algorithm of Google dictates that when you use a </h1>
<h1> that the text enclosed in the tag has more importance than the rest of the content on the page.

Sprinkling your main keywords throughout the content of your pages also can help to improve the keyword density on your site. What keyword density means is the ratio of the keywords you are optimizing for in relation to all of the other content that is on your page. Usually keyword density is expressed in the form of a percentage. Some experts recommend that your keyword density should be around 7% for each page, while others recommend less. The key is to not overdo keyword density but also to not overlook it.

Step 4. Links, Links, Links
Now for the hardest part of the Google optimization process: back links. A back link occurs when a website links directly back to your website. In general the more websites linking back to your site, the higher ranked your pages will be. The assumption is that you must have a good website if lots of other sites are linking to it.

Submitting your website to directories like dmoz.org and Yahoo is another step that can help increase how many websites link back to your site. Keep in mind that it does take time to set up back links. I would recommend that you email 5-10 websites each day requesting a partnership link or back link. You should contact sites that are relevant but not necessarily direct competitors. Within a weeks, you could have around 100 or so sites linking back to your website.

Google can be a hard search engine to rank for. Hopefully these basic tips will help you get off to a good start in optimizing your website or client websites.

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The misuse of the word bandwidth got started due to the fact that you are provided with a certain number of Gigabytes on a monthly basis with most hosting packages. Maybe some thought this was the equivalent of bandwidth.

Bandwidth refers to data transfer rate. It refers to a certain speed of data transfer. Unlimited bandwidth would actually mean infinite speed when data was transferred. Such a thing doesn’t exist.

What most hosting companies are referring to as bandwidth in terms of their reseller and shared hosting accounts is actually data transfer and not data transfer rate. For example when they state 5 GB of bandwidth, they mean that you will be allowed 5 GB of data transfer in a month. This is the amount of data you are allowed to consume or use not the speed at which it can be or will be transmitted.

Unlimited bandwidth is one of the more sensitive as well as controversial issues when it comes to web hosting. Some web hosting companies offer unlimited bandwidth with their hosting plans. What is really mind boggling is that it is offered for a fixed price.

Selling something as unlimited is extreme overselling, no matter what you happen to be selling. There isn’t anything in the world that is unlimited.

Companies defend themselves by saying how they don’t try to prevent users from consuming an unlimited amount of data transfer. However that would be unmetered bandwidth.

Unmetered bandwidth is OK if you are renting a server with a connection of 10 mbit/second that you don’t share with anyone else. However, it’s not ok when you’re talking about reseller or shared hosting.

When you are renting a whole server, it’s fine if you max out the connection. However if you are on a shared server you are competing with other websites on the server. You will never enjoy the entire 10mbit connection.

In addition there is contented bandwidth. You may be sold on a server that has a 10 mbit connection that comes with unmetered bandwidth. 15 other people may be sold the same. However, the seller doesn’t possess a 150 mb connection, rather he has one that is 100 mbit connection. In other words he is overselling. Hosting is a tricky business.

The reality of the situation is that the hidden policy for most companies offering unlimited bandwidth is that they either close accounts that use over a certain GB per month, or the resources abuse clause is used for suspending the user’s account.

Even though these offers state “unlimited bandwidth,” it won’t be delivered and web hosting companies know this. Everyone else needs to know that from the start too. The network physically has a limited speed when it comes to transmission. Hosting companies can only send a certain number of GB per month.

Unlimited data transfer and bandwidth don’t exist and can’t ever truly be delivered, despite the fact that they are offered. It is all hype and marketing.

Many times the initial offer reads as “unlimited” but if you carefully read their terms of service it turns into “limited.” There will often be a point at which the hosting company reserves their right to stop data transfer for your hosting (suspend your account) if your bandwidth (actually data transfer) should exceed your unlimited value of, for example 20GB during a certain month. In my opinion, this is barely legal. However it’s hard to prove they are trying be deceptive.

I read one time where someone signed up for a hosting account that had unlimited bandwidth. One day he got an email asking that he upgrade his account because he had reached the “unlimited” limit.

I have participated in discussions on hosting forums with hosting company owners offering unlimited bandwidth. Some of us were asking some questions. One time it came up that although the host stated no limit on their website they were using a monthly data transfer in-house limit of 10GB while at the same time advertising it as “unlimited.” On the forum the owner actually argued that their customers didn’t complain and some of them had multiple accounts with “unlimited bandwidth.”

To summarize, it is impossible physically to achieve what is called unlimited bandwidth. Maybe extreme amounts, but not unlimited.

When I see unlimited bandwidth being advertised it’s a bad sign. It may be good from a marketing standpoint for attracting innocent and maybe even ignorant clients. However, for clients who are educated, it’s a definite no no.

Personally I avoid unlimited bandwidth. I understand overselling to a point, but overselling to the point of unlimited bandwidth is extreme.

I want to know what exactly I am getting. I expect numbers for things like bandwidth, web space and other features of web hosting. Level of customer support is one thing that can’t be exactly expressed in numbers. I look for customer reviews for that.

There are other features that are offered as unlimited on hosting accounts as well. One is unlimited space. Web space, just like bandwidth, is limited. When it comes to hard disks they have limited capacities. Hosts offering unlimited space could argue that more hard disks could be added whenever necessary. However space will always be limited. Responsible and smart hosting companies don’t advertise or offer unlimited bandwidth or space.

Once definitions for space and bandwidth limits have been defined, other unlimiteds are fairly acceptable and standard practice. Things like unlimited email accounts, FTP accounts and databases are acceptable due to they fact that the host doesn’t limit them. They are based on how much space you purchased. Each account needs space. Unlimited email accounts means how many accounts you are able to create given the amount of space on your account.

Just a few years ago budget hosting for $8 a month would give your data transfer of 40-50 GB a month. Now you can get data transfer of 3000-5000 GB for the same amount of money or even less. That isn’t ten times more, it is 100 times more. Most of the increase has been fueled by overselling. Costs have gone down and technology has improved, but not by anywhere near those magnitudes. Just data transfer allocations would cost $300 at least, and that doesn’t even include things like advertising, customer support and disk space.

Budget hosts didn’t have a choice. They chose to get into this market and leaving isn’t really an option if your customers are constantly looking to find the best deal. They all seem to just go with the flow.

Pretty soon they will be calling all of it unlimited. It’s not really a big surprise. That is where it’s all headed. It all comes down to the CPU usage and its relation to how much you pay. The big hosts don’t need to prevent customers from using up all the data transfer because they have plenty that isn’t used. However they can’t give an entire server away for only $8 a month. When a site bogs the server down, it has to go. That is where the line gets drawn and limits eventually the amount of data transfer customers are able to push.

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