When you visit a web hosting website, you immediately see a variety of plans that you can choose from. So which is the most appropriate plan to sign up for? Here is a comprehensive guide that may help you.

Step 1: Defining your goals.

What type of site would you like to setup? Do you want a site with static HTML pages? Or you do want a site that is easy to maintain because you know there will be numerous changes down the road. In that case, you need to install a CMS so that you don’t have to hire someone every time you need some changes to be done.

Step 2: Getting a domain name.

You will need to get your own domain name before you sign up for a hosting plan. You can always point your domain to your new hosting account afterward. Your hosting Company will provide you with the nameservers together with your sign up information. Nameservers will look something like this:

Primary: ns1.yourhostingcompany.com
Secondary: ns2.yourhostingcompany.com

Step 3: Deciding between Windows and Linux.

Different OS comes with different control panels. The leaders in the market are currently HELM (for Windows) and Cpanel (for Linux). Both are very easy to use, but each offers its own unique features.

For beginners looking to setup static HTML websites, both types of servers will do just fine. But if you are thinking of installing some software, you may need to stop for a while and think.

Windows servers are primarily meant to host .Net applications. Although it can also run PHP scripts, you are much better off having them on your Linux servers.

Step 4: Deciding on the actual hosting plan.

As a beginner, you should start from the lowest plan – and that’s a shared hosting plan. A shared hosting environment means that hundreds of sites can be hosted on a single server. The reason why this doesn’t overload the server is because these are mostly small sites and they take up minimal resources. So they can coexist on the same server without much problems.

However, sometimes, there may be individuals who abuse the servers by overloading the system with resource intensive scripts. This can happen due to inexperience or ignorance, and it can affect you. Professional hosting companies have learned to deal with this problem by suspending abusive accounts quickly. They have the right tools to do this.

There are, of course, other hosting plans such as reseller plans, VPS hosting, and dedicated server hosting. Unless you are developing your own software or running huge community sites, you probably don’t need VPS or dedicated hosting. You may, however, consider signing up for a reseller plan because such plans allocate more resources to a single account.

Step 5: Change your nameservers.

Usually, the activation is instant upon payment. Once you sign up with a web hosting company, you will receive the log in information from your web host via email. You may then login to the control panel to add your sites to the account. Remember to change your nameservers. Give the domain names up to 48 hours to propagate (it’s usually faster).

By: Darren W Chow

With hundreds of companies competing for your hosting business, it’s important that you make an informed decision when you chose your web hosting provider. Hosting your site with the wrong company can cost you hundreds of wasted man hours that can be avoided by spending an hour or two evaluating your options. The first, and most important, factor to consider when choosing a web hosting provider is what operating system your web application needs to run on.

What Type of Pages Will Your Web Site Contain?
 
If you plan on hosting standard HTML pages on your website and nothing else, the operating system of your web hosting provider won’t really matter. An HTML Page can be served from both a Windows hosting Provider and a Linux hosting provider.

However, if you plan on having a web developer work on your website to create dynamic, database driven web pages, you need to do some research. Will your website be using special back end software languages? If you need to utilize languages such as PHP, Perl or CGI you will most likely need a Linux hosting provider. However, if you will be using ASP, ASP.NET, or other Microsoft based languages, you will need to find a Windows hosting provider. These Microsoft technologies WILL NOT RUN on a Linux operating system.
 
What Type of Database Will Your Web Site Use?
 
If you plan on utilizing a database with your website, what database will you use? Microsoft Access is an easy to use, relatively inexpensive database that can be used in conjunction with websites. However, Microsoft Access can only be served from a Windows hosting provider. A Company that only provides Linux hosting capabilities will not support Access databases.
 
A great alternative to Access is MySQL which can be run off of a Linux host or a Windows host. MySQL is fast becoming the standard in web site databases because of its ability to be easily transferred from one server to another. In addition, most hosting providers have online MySQL tools that allow you to use the database software without incurring any additional expense.
 
JavaScript, Flash and other Multimedia Content
 
If your website doesn’t call for fancy back end languages or data base connectivity, then the operating system your web hosting provider uses won’t matter. Scripts such as JavaScript which function on the “front end” of a web page can be utilized whether you use a Linux hosting provider or a Windows hosting provider. In addition, adding utilities such as Flash or multimedia videos (think YouTube) can be added to a web page regardless of the operating system installed by your web hosting provider.
 
Costs
 
Because Windows is a licensed, proprietary operating system, the costs associated with Windows hosting is usually higher than Linux hosting. If you don’t need to use a Microsoft based database or web language, you are probably better off using a Linux hosting provider for your site.
 
Typically, Linux hosting costs less than five dollars a month and Windows hosting costs less than $10 a month. The extra $60 a year for a Windows hosting provider can add up, especially if you plan on hosting multiple web sites for your company.

By: Brian Anthony

Any person interested in publishing any data on the Internet requires Web Hosting. Web hosting has been around for several years now and has evolved from simple HTML pages hosting, small simple sites with a few images into full blown web based hosted applications where end users can visit a site, interact with the web site owner, and even purchase goods and services all over the internet.

The use of Internet as a medium for integrating business across the globe with the help of Web Based software applications has produced wide range of web based technologies like ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, PHP, and others. This choice has forced various options for web hosting now as HTML based sites work equally well on both Linux and Windows platforms.

Web hosting platforms vary from different types of operating systems. Microsoft Windows Server and Redhat Linux are just two examples and probably the most well known web hosting platforms. So, what is Windows or Linux web hosting and what are the advantages and disadvantages to hosting your web site on either Server. And why now Linux is gaining more popularity. Well, that’s just the answer isn’t it?

Linux platform has been developed by Community based efforts and it has been rendered for professional use with the efforts of many IT companies like Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, and like. This background of Community development and open source nature of Linux Server and backup of professional IT companies has made Linux platform more powerful, inexpensive and secured.

The cost effectiveness in this competitive era is a major boost that the companies required without compromising on the quality and security of the product. Apart from ASP, ASP.NET, all other major web based technologies work well with Linux. The virtually free distribution of PHP, MySQL, PERL has reduced the costs of the website hosting tremendously on Linux Server. At Sakshay, we provide both kind of hosting services but the advice to companies requiring Hosting for HTML based websites, small applications like Recipe site is to use Linux Hosting.

The menace of viruses, spamming and hacking is also quite less with Linux Hosting. Firstly, this is due to the robust architecture of Linux Server and Secondly, due to many cost effective softwares available for protection on Linux Platform.

The following are the advantages of using Linux based web server compared to Windows based web server:

Stable and Robust: Linux/Unix operating systems has traditionally been believed to be very stable and robust. A web site housed on a Linux operating system will have very high up-time (of the order of 99.9%). Of course, other factors such as power supply, network admin skills, and network load etc. also matter when it comes to maintaining the system uptime.

Low cost of ownership: The Linux OS comes free of cost (or at very insignificant cost, usually cost of distribution). Also, it has full fledged server, and desk top applications that comes free along with the OS. These server applications (such as FTP, Web Server, DNS Server, File Server etc.) being free, are also very stable.

User Friendly: When it comes to web hosting, it is easy to host on Linux web servers. The process of uploading and hosting is almost same for both Linux and Windows web servers. If you want to use a Windows based tool such as Front Page for uploading a web site on to a Linux based web server, make sure that the Front Page extensions are enabled. This is only required if you are uploading using HTTP feature (http://www.yourwebsite.com) of Front Page. Front Page also makes it possible to upload a web site using FTP. You need to select ftp://www.yourwebsite.com for up loading using front page FTP option. Note that if you select “Front Page Extensions”; during web site design, you must enable Front Page extensions on a Linux web server also. These days, all Linux web servers are coming with installable Front Page extensions, and this should pose no problem for hosting on a Linux platform. You can use almost all types of file extensions (or scripts) when using Linux web server. Commonly, the following extensions are supported: .cgi, .html, .htm, .pl, .php, .shtml, .xml, and others. Basically it means that you can host web sites that use different types of server side scripts including .cgi, .pl, .php, and .asp (with plug-in).

Easy to move between hosts: A web site designed to be hosted on a Linux based web server can be hosted on a Windows web server easily, where as the reverse is not always true.

Most widely used: Linux/Unix based web hosting is most widely used compared to Windows based web hosting.

Scalability: Scalability and future expansion are other major criteria to consider while hosting an application. A web site is dynamic. Usually, a web site starts with a few pages of html and grows over a period of time to suit the customers requirements. It is preferable to design a web site keeping this requirements in mind. A web site designed for compatibility with a Linux/Unix based web server meets the scalability requirement easily without making any site wide design changes.

Self Management of your website on a Linux Web Hosting Plan with Sakshay hosting is made very easy with our Implementation of the Award Winning Control Panel software by Sw-Soft called Plesk. Plesk is a web based interface to your Linux web hosting account that allows you to create e-mail addresses and mailboxes, view your web site traffic statistics, set permissions on your HTML, PHP pages, MySQL, and more. We also provide Windows Hosting with Plesk Panel.

So, all kudos to Linux and open source technologies for making the technology affordable and within the reach of common man.
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By: Ravi Chamria