Shopping for a Web Hosting Provider

Posted by http://retwt.me/ce6p Monday, October 12, 2009 3 comments



When shopping for any just about any item or service we want to know exactly what we are getting. When grocery shopping we look at nutrition labels, which are typically fairly easy to decipher. When car shopping we read the window "sticker" to find out engine size, type of transmission, fuel economy...,

which can get a little more complicated if you are not familiar with cars but want the nitty gritty of what exactly a 210-hp 4.0L single OHC can do for you vs. a 2.0L Duratec 20 I4 engine can do. However, in that situation you usually have a nice helpful salesperson to explain (or convince) to you how every nut and bolt will work for you.

But what about when you are shopping for a web hosting company? Typically, if you are internet savvy enough to research web hosting (without looking at the entire 150,000,000 search results that will come up) you will be able to narrow your options down a to few webhosting companies that appear to have what you will need to build a website.

Each of these sites will then have a "list of features" (your nutritional facts) but within these "features" you find things like PHP, Python, Dedicated Server, VPS, ecommerce, SSL certificates, FTP users, PERL, domains etc...(Which may sound a lot like 210-hp 4.0L single OHC if you are not familiar with web hosting). But where are the salesmen who can take you by the hand and explain what exactly all of these things mean to you, your business, and/or your website?

Some of the sites may have a toll free customer support sales line you can call, which is hopefully in their offices and not answered from some other country. Otherwise it is up to you to find out what these things do for you.

We have designed this blog to give you web host reviews and comparisons, to help you understand exactly what you are getting in a web hosting package, and to help define some of these "feature" terms so you can feel good about making an educated choice when looking for a web hosting provider.

LunarPages vs. GoDaddy

Posted by http://retwt.me/ce6p Saturday, October 10, 2009 0 comments


As far as making a side by side comparison to their webhosting packages we decided to review GoDaddy's $6.99 plan versus LunarPages $4.95 plans. Both web hosting packages include FrontPage, CGI, RoR, PHP, PERL, Python, webmail, autoresponders, email forwarders, spam and fraud protection, streaming audio and visual, real media, and shared ssl certificates (with the option to purchase your own dedicated ssl certificate).

GoDaddy:
$6.99
150 GB Diskspace
1,500 GB in monthly data transfer
25 MySQL Databases
Unlimited external and subdomains
50 FTP Accounts
500 Email Accounts
500 MB email storage
2 shopping carts
5 blogs
$1.99 domain name

LunarPages:
Unlimited web space
Unlimited data transfer
Unlimited MySQL databases
Unlimited add-on, sub, and parked domains
Unlimited FTP

Unlimited email accounts
3 shopping carts
3 blogs
Free domain name

Both GoDaddy and LunarPages have a number of customer support solutions including tutorials, FAQ's, glossaries, forums, blogs, guides, knowledgebase, wiki, and news. The main difference is GoDaddy's phone service is not toll free where LunarPages' is.

GoDaddy and LunarPages are both very dedicated to giving back to communities. GoDaddy has a whole page dedicated to all of the charities they have participated in and LunarPages has an education program that offers free hosting services to any K-12 school within the United States.

In our review of GoDaddy vs. LunarPages we discovered that both of them have an excellent record of providing web hosting packages as well as services that compliment them.



Streaming Media

Posted by http://retwt.me/ce6p 0 comments



With progressive streaming, a file is downloaded from the server, and usually starts to play while the rest of the file is still downloading. The entire file is downloaded and stored on the visitors computer.

Many hosts are not very supportive of this type of streaming because it takes up a lot of disk space and data transfer and costs the host more money. Some streaming media hosts will not allow mp3,avi, or mpeg files to be uploaded. If you are considering creating a website that has a lot of streaming media files find out if your hosting package will accommodate your needs.

Real time or server based streaming is designed for people who wish to have a lot of multimedia files on their website. As the name suggests, these files are stored on a special dedicated server and works very well for media to be viewed in "real time" such as live TV broadcasts, webinars, and internetbased classrooms. Some of the more popular streaming servers are the QuickTime Streaming Server from Apple, the Real Networks Server or the Windows Media Server.


With real time streaming the entire file is not downloaded to the player. It is much like watching TVonly the view may have the option to view ahead, look back, or skip around. Because real time servers can be very expensive they are not typically included in low cost packages. Some web hosts may offer this at an additional cost or have slightly higher pricing for web hosting packages that include this option.

If you are building a website and not sure whether you will use this feature it you may to consider the possibility you may want to expand and you this option later.

Godaddy Vs Yahoo

Posted by http://retwt.me/ce6p 0 comments


As far as comparing one webhosting package, we chose GoDaddy's $6.99 plan versus Yahoo!'s $7.77 plan. They both offer FrontPage, PHP, Perl, and FTP. Customer support services are similar with tutorials, online guides, FAQ, etc...One difference is Yahoo! has a toll-free 24/7 telephone whereas GoDaddy is not toll free.

GoDaddy $6.99 plan:
150 GB Disk Space
1,500 GB Monthly Data Transfer
500 MB Email Storage
500 Email Accounts
$25 Google Adword
$50 Microsoft Adword
$50 Facebook Ad
Domains $1.99
50 FTP Accounts
25 MySQL

Yahoo! $7.77 plan (goes to $11.95 after 3 months):
Unlimited Web Space
Unlimited Data Transfer
Unlimited Email Storage
1,000 Email Addresses
$100 Yahoo! Search
$50 Google Adword
Free Domain Name
Unlimited MySQL

Some differences between the two web hosting companies are:
GoDaddy is an ICANN accredited domain registrar
GoDaddy does not require long term contracts (but discounts on 12, 24, and 36 months)
GoDaddy has a number of hosting plans starting at $4.99 with many upgrade options to all
GoDaddy has virtual, dedicated, grid, blog, and podcast hosting.
GoDaddy allows you to test their products from their site.

Yahoo! offers a 30 day money back guarantee
Yahoo! has a comprehensive profile of their web hosting services
Yahoo! has a site builder with 380 templates

Both GoDaddy and Yahoo! are very large and very well known companies. Both offer great products and stand behind them.

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