HostEase Hosting Blog

You will be surprised at the number of web hosting companies you come across on the web. Then how to pick the right hosting provider among them? Will you be tricked into buying a poor web host?

We’ve introduced some basic concepts of web hosting and the difference between hosting provider and reseller, today we’ll

Give some tips on how to find a web hosting provider that best fits you.

1. Write down the products or services you want to receive from the hosting provider
In fact you don’t have to write them down on a piece of paper, but you’d better make sure what you really need and don’t need, and the most important factor for you in looking for a web hosting provider.

For example, business websites hope that their websites can always be accessed at any time so that they’ll not lose any potential customer. As a result, the reliability of the hosting provider will be their focus when purchasing a hosting plan. And personal bloggers usually pay more attention on the availability of free tools.

The approximate number of web space you need, the bandwidth, the uptime, the customer support service…should also be put into consideration.

2. Targeting one or more hosting provider
This can be down through several channels.
First, and usually the most common one, you can get information from your friends, relations and co-workers who once used or are using a web host. They’ll be happy to share you some suggestion based on their experience.

If you’re alone in this field, don’t worry, there’s also numerous resource on the Internet. Do a search on the search engines, or visit the websites or forums on the topic of web hosting. Read the articles and reviews of other users, and learn from the advantages and disadvantages of each hosting providers.

After comparing the services offered by the hosting providers with you needs, you may find several providers that meet your needs if you are lucky enough.

3. Make a test for the web hosting provider you target
It is suggested that you test on the responsiveness and flexibility of the hosting provider you’ve targeted.

First, check to see if the hosting provider publishes their physical address and phone number on their site. Companies unwilling to reveal their location may have good reasons for hiding.

And don’t be fooled by the phone number on the site. A phone number on the website doesn’t mean your call will be answered by someone, especially on weekends.

So if there’s a phone number, call it on weekends and see if someone answers. If there’s someone answering, ask him/her some questions to know more about the service they provide; if it goes to voice mail, leave a message and see how long it takes them to call you back.

After the test, it’s the final time to decide a hosting provider to host your website.

Tags: web hosting company, Website

I’ve tried many kinds of virtual host, and I had also been a hosting reseller, now I want to share you with some tips on choosing a web host. Today we’ll focus on the role of hosting service providers and resellers in the field of web hosting.

1. The definition of hosting provider and hosting reseller
Beginners usually cannot tell a hosting provider from a hosting reseller. For these beginners, both of providers and resellers are hosting service providers and they see no difference between them.

Frankly speaking, web hosting providers are those who rent or host servers, custom hosting plans and market the hosting products independently; while hosting resellers are those who register an account and get allotted disk space and bandwidth from hosting provider, what reseller sells are the hosting plans designed by the provider. The most obvious difference lies in that, providers has the control permissions of the servers, while resellers act as the salesmen and after-sales men of the provider, they promote the products for the providers and have no access permission of the servers.

2. Why should we realize the difference between hosting providers and resellers?
The quality of the web host depends on the hosting provider, and a reseller can seldom control the quality of the web host it promotes. So it is necessary for you to make out the real provider if you want to purchase hosting plans from the reseller.

The advantages of identifying hosting providers and resellers: 1) you can decide whether to purchase a web host through reseller or not

2) Once you are going to buy a web host from the reseller, it is recommended to make sure the following questions: whose hosting plan is the reseller selling? How about the quality of its products? Can the reseller offer you the service you need? What will happen to you if the reseller terminates its business?

3) With the answers of the above questions, you may get a more preferential price from the reseller. The resellers often offer the same products with lower price than the provider does.

3. Which one should I prefer, hosting provider or reseller?
The favorable price is a great advantage of resellers. Resellers can also make web design for your website. But every advantage has its disadvantage, the service quality and stability of resellers troubles lots of their customers.

Based on these advantages and disadvantages, you can make the decision according to your preference.

4. The first thing you should do at the sight of a hosting service provider/reseller
Before going with a new hosting company, always take some time to check them out. 1) Do a quick search in Google for your host, and read up on any articles and reviews that come up about them. By reading about other people’s experiences, you can learn from their advantages and mistakes. While all the reviews are only for reference. 2) Make a call to the hosting company on weekends, see if someone answers. If there’s someone answering, ask him/her some questions to make a test; if it goes to voice mail, leave a message and see how long it takes them to call you back.

Conclusion
As far as I am concerned, I’ll never choose a hosting reseller unless I’m quite lack of money and want to spend as few as possible or I’m not serious about my site. Otherwise I’ll always prefer a hosting provider, even if it will cost more than a reseller does. Usually stability is the first element that we should consider.

Tags: hosting providers, hosting resellers, Service

Before getting a web host, you should be familiar with some basic concepts of web hosting. Here I’ll give a brief introduction of some fundamental concepts to make the beginners understand easily.

1. Server, Virtual host, VPS, web disk space
A server is a computer which is equipped with a set of necessary applications that provide web service. Generally speaking, there is no essential difference between a server and a computer, in some circumstances there are even servers that run not as smoothly as computers we use.

Virtual hosting is a method that host more than one domain names (websites) on the same server. Websites on the same server are independent from each other in a certain sense. Both virtual hosting and dedicated server can meet the needs of web masters, while the low price of virtual hosting gives it a big advantage over dedicated servers.

VPS, Virtual Private Server (also referred to as Virtual Dedicated Server or VDS), is a method of partitioning a physical server computer into multiple servers such that each has the appearance and capabilities of running on its own dedicated machine. Each virtual server can run its own full-fledged operating system, and each server can be independently rebooted. This is a hosting solution with performance higher than virtual hosting and price lower than dedicated server.

Web space, also known as disk space, is the holding space for your digital data, which may include server, virtual hosting and VPS mentioned above. Beginners usually pay a lot of attention on the volume of web space, while in face there are many other important factors they should take into consideration.

2. Dedicated IP address, Shared IP address (IP sharing)
Dedicated IP address and Shared IP address is a pair of corresponding concepts. In dedicated IP hosting, each virtual host has a different IP address. And in shared IP address hosting, all virtual hosts on the same server share a same IP address. The primary reason for a site to use a dedicated IP is to be able to use its own SSL certificate rather than a shared certificate.

3. Windows, Linux, Unix
When you come across the terms such as Windows hosting and Linux hosting, you should realize that these terms are used to describe the operating system of the server, which has nothing to do with the operating system used by your own computer.

The choice of the operating system on the web host depends on the requirement of your website application. Generally, PHP websites prefer Linux hosting, and Windows hosting are more suitable for websites designed with ASP, ASP.net.

4. IIS, Apache, MySQL, MSSQL, ACCESS
IIS and Apache are both popular web servers. MySQL, MSSQL and ACCESS refer to three kinds of database.

5. Concurrent Connection
This is a most concerned factor, which can also confuse lots of users.

The configuration of a web host can affect the max concurrent connection; however it can’t limit the online users within an exact number. The max concurrent connection is affected by several factors, such as the server, the web application you use, and the property of the visitors.

IIS connections can limit the max concurrent connection, while concurrent connection is more likely to be affected by the CPU limitation.

Page View (PV) and hits reflect the server load more precisely, and are more informative than concurrent connections. PV and hits are related to web applications.

With these basic concepts, you can start looking for a web host now.

Tags: IP, linux, Server, unix, Virtual host, VPS, web disk space, webhosting, windows

HostEase is a trustworthy hosting provider. We are willing to solve your problem at any time. Sometimes, we receive problems such as why I can’t open my website and the like… Here I’d like to share some experience with you guys. The common reasons can be as follows:

1. Network setting problem. This is frequently seen in the situation that you need to manually specify the IP, gateway, DNS server, network mode, and proxy server. Check your computer’s network setting carefully.

2. DNS server problem. When you can’t visit the website in IE, you can use IP address instead to access it. If you can get access to the website through IP address, it should be a DNS issue. Then check the DNS setting in the Property of network.

3. Domain name resolution problem. When a new domain is registered or the resolution record of a domain changes, you can’t access your website until it comes into effect.

4. IE browser problem. When there is something wrong with the IE browser itself, it will surely affect the web browsing. Then you can try another browser to check.

5. Network firewall issue. If the network firewall isn’t set properly, for example, security level is too high or IE is put into block access list accidentally, the websites will not be opening. Then you need to change the setting.

6. The problem of hosts file. Modification of hosts file can also lead to the website’s not opening .The solution is to empty the content of the hosts file.

7. Infected with virus. Sometimes, when opening a website in IE, you may see such notice in the lower left box: Opening web pages, but it does not respond for a long time. View the process in Task Manager to see the CPU occupancy rate. If it is 100%, you should look up which process is taking up CPU resource. Locate and click to end it. If failed, you have to enter the safe mode to delete it. Finally, go to the registry to delete the process.

We would be appreciated if you can also give your precious experiences.

Tags: DNS, Domain Name, Firewall, IE, network, Virus, Website

The aspects related to the performance of virtual hosting

I.The speed and stability of server
As a kind of network service, the most important of virtual hosting is the stability of system. Stability masters the online percentage of virtual hosting and concerns the success of a website directly.

The performance of virtual hosting depends on the configuration of server and some other factors, such as operating system used and software. Bandwidth is the guarantee of speed, so the speed of server depends on bandwidth. Bandwidth refers to the bandwidth connect virtual host to each server, many service providers often only give the amount of bandwidth connected into the machine room when promoting, but they do not specify the available bandwidth for each server. As a consumer, you should be careful.

Ⅱ.The load balancing of server
Web hosting technology makes it possible to create multiple sites on a single physical server. Obviously, this makes the fee of enterprises building website decreased, but according to experience, the performance of server will decrease significantly when the sites on virtual host exceed a certain number (200). If the sites support database query service, the decrement of performance will be more significant. Some large-scale virtual host of the world, even limit the imposition of restrictions on the number of users in 100 or less on each server.

Ⅲ. Strong technical support
We can compare enterprise/individual established website using virtual host on server to your child who lives in someone else’s house, although there have no starvation and chilliness, you still worry about him. So as the provider of virtual host, we should fully understand the mindset of users, meanwhile; support them with timely emergency response and related technical solution and services. What’s more, the construction and maintenance of site on virtual host should be based on solid technical foundation and extraordinary sense of responsibility, as well as related value-added services. In fact, there is huge challenge to supply virtual hosting service on technical support. According to introduction of experts in this area, in addition to master a variety of operating systems and related operating systems management, optimization ,the providers must have not only the developing capabilities of system level and application-level on these operating systems (such as a variety of web servers, mail servers, DNS servers, load balancing, etc..), but also the WAN, LAN and other network management capabilities, as well as the capability of database processing in management-level configuration of computer hardware. If a virtual hosting provider does not own the professional technical team to supply technical support as described above, then they can only provide poor service and will not be able to guarantee stability.

Virtual web hosting is a very nice solution for small to medium- size websites. There are many different packages from different web hosting companies. HostEase for instance, offers three plans to our customers: Blog Plan, Basic Plan and Business Plan.

Tags: Server, technical support, virtual web hosting

JJ, a young guy who is very interested in my working field. He often asks me some nice questions.He asked what is “Cloud Computing” last night. And we were really enjoying our topic. Here are some points we’ve disscussed, shraring with the friends who come to visit.

“Cloud computing” was raised by Google. We can imagine it a beautiful network application mode on its name. In the “cloud computing” age, we can put those mobile devices aside such as flash disk. Just head to the page of “Google Docs”, create a document and edit it, then share the URL of the document with your friends or your colleagues so that they can visit the document directly on their browsers through the URL. We will no longer have to worry about information lost due to damaged hard disk.

During the “cloud computing” period, “Cloud computing” will do the work of memory and computing for us. “Cloud computing” is said to be a cluster with computers. Every cluster contains maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions of computers. “Cloud computing” still has a further advantage on keeping the computers it contains up-to-date. Google has a number of this “cloud” and so does Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon. At that time, we only need a computer which can be online. Once needed, we can quickly locate and compute the data wherever we are.

Forms of “Cloud computing”
1.SAAS: The trait of this type of “cloud computing” is: the procedure was sent to thousands upon thousands of users through the browser. In the users’ view, this will save the costs on the authorization of some software. In the suppliers’ view, this will reduce their cost because they only need to maintain a procedure. Salesforce.com is the most famous one on supplying this kind of service by far.

2.Utility computing: This type of “cloud computing” is creating a virtual datacenter which can make memory, I/O device, the ability of memory and computing together to be a virtual resource pool and providing service on the Internet.

3.Network services: It is very close to SAAS. The supplier can provide API for the developers so that they can develop more applications based on the Internet instead of some stand-alone program.

4.Platform for service: It is another type of SAAS. This type of “cloud computing” provides developing environment as a service to the public. You can use a middle-man’s device to develop your procedure and deliver the service to your users through the Internet.

5.MSP (manage service provide): This is the most ancient method of “cloud computing” for people to use. This kind of application was IT industry-oriented, such as Personal payment management system.

6.Commercial service platform: This type of application mixed SAAS and MSP applications. It provides a platform between users and the suppliers.

7.Internet integration: This will integrate those companies which provide similar services on the Internet so that users could compare and choose their own service provider more easily.

The features of “Cloud computing”
1.Large: “Cloud computing” has a large number of computers. Such as Google, whose “cloud computing” has more than 1 million server till now. It can give users an unprecedented computing ability.

2.Virtual: This means that users can stay anywhere, use any kind of terminal to get the service. There is no need for users to know where the process of computing happens. They only need a computer or a mobile phone and they will get everything they need through the Internet.

3.High reliability: “Cloud computing” has made a lot of measures to ensure the service reliability.

4.Being universal: “Cloud computing” is not for a specific application. One “cloud computing” could support different applications running at the same time.

5.Highly extension: “Cloud computing” is highly telescopic. This could satisfy users’ growing demands.

6.Provide services on users’ needs: “Cloud computing” is a large resource pool. And it can be paid on the amount you used.

7.Very cheap: The component of a “cloud computing” is very cheap. The popularity of “Cloud computing” makes the resource’s utilization more efficient. So that you can spend only hundreds of dollars and several days to complete the work which should have spent you tens of thousands of dollars and months of time.

“Cloud computing” can completely change people’s future, but at the same time we need to take environmental issues seriously. So that it will make contribution to human progress, rather than simply upgrade their technology.

Tags: cloud computing, MSP, SASS