Changing Web Hosts? Step-By-Step Guide

Choosing the right web hosting company is an important aspect in cutting your web hosting costs down. The web hosting industry, boosting several thousand web hosts, is still young and growing at a remarkable pace; hence finding the right host is not only difficult, but very time consuming; fortunately though it is worth the time and effort. There are a few things to keep in mind when exploring; when deciding to form a partnership with the host. Below are just a few things to consider, which directly attribute to final cost.

Bandwidth — Figure out approximately how much bandwidth (data transfer) your web site requires. As above, ensure you get more bandwidth than your site uses. For example, if your website uses 8GB bandwidth per month, then choose a plan, which offers at least 8 or 10GB bandwidth per month. This again will prevent 'spikes' of over usage, leading to higher extra costs. As a reference, an average web site should pay no more than $3 per GB for bandwidth usage.

Disk Space — Knowing how much web space your web site needs and compensating for a bit extra, for growth. For example, if your web site needs 200 MB of disk space, look for the plan which offers at least 250 to 300 MB of web space; this will prevent a large unexpected bill at the end of the month when high priced costs, charged by most web hosts for extra disk space usage, are added on to your bill. As a rule of thumb, an average web site should cost you no more than $1 per 10 MB

Add On — Ask the web host if they have "Add-ons" facilities for purchasing projected extra disk space or bandwidth. But, be careful, if your web site needs only 2 GB extra bandwidth, you may have to buy an extra package in blocks of 5GB bandwidth; in this case, look for the host which will allow you to purchase extra disk space and bandwidth allowance as per your needs, this is crucial to cost savings

Caution: Ensure that you know the over-usage allowance rules; you need to know what happens if your web site uses more disk space or bandwidth than you have been allocated. The web host who informs you of possible over-usage well in advance, allowing you to take measures to reduce or budget for extra usage, is 'worth their weight in gold'.

No. of Web Sites — If you have more than one web site, sign up an account with a web host who provides multiple domains hosted on one account; this will work out a lot cheaper than an account per website.

A good tip would be to ask your friends and colleagues if they want to host their websites with you on one account. For example at M6.net a person or persons with 4 websites can save roughly $20 per month by signing up an M6-2, multiple hosting account.

Databases and Scripting Support — Ensure that all the applications your web site uses (FrontPage, ASP pages, databases, cgi, PHP, etc.), are supported within the chosen account type. Find out if there are any extra fees for particular applications or associated database support. For example allot of hosts charge extra set-up fees to install FrontPage, which may be avoided by choosing another host offering the same features with no extra costs.

Mail Server — Emails are the lifeblood of your online business. Ensure that you get a sufficient number of email addresses with your own domain name (preferably unlimited); these are necessary for other email features like forwarders, and auto responders, etc. There is no need to pay an extra fee for use of a mail server as many hosts offer this service now for free, within the hosting plan.

Avoid Long Term Contracts — Many web hosts offer huge discounts on yearly or half yearly payments in advance, this may appear a good way to go, but note how long you are locked in. If possible avoid long-term contracts until you are sure about the services and reliability offered by that particular host. Paying on a monthly basis obviously has its benefits. If there are concerns with your service encouraging you to seek a new host elsewhere, you may lose out on many months of hosting fees when breaking a yearly or half-yearly contract; but, if the necessity arises, a loss of only a few days to close a troublesome account, is preferable.

Thinking ahead with reference to an established plan of action will help you avoid most surprises, and definitely help towards cutting costs, short term or long-term. Work out your growth rate and project future expansions. Keep a good record of past and present bandwidth and web space usage; this will help to project future needs.

Savings are mostly a matter of common sense, but in this industry of high technology most people forget this rule and try to look for the best, most efficient and most expensive technical programs and software to save them a buck or two. As in most businesses good cost effective groundwork is the best start to cutting costs.

How To Host Several Websites Under One Account

If you operate several websites, each with its own domain name, signing up of separate hosting accounts can be an expensive proposition. Even if your hosting company offers the add-on domain feature (which will allow you to add different domains to the same hosting account) you will be charged a monthly fee for each domain you add, sometimes costing almost the same as your full hosting fee.

Introduction to FTP

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is a standard application protocol that uses the Internet’s TCP/IP protocol to transfer files from one computer to another.

FTP is a very common process today. FTP is commonly used to transfer web pages from the creator’s computer to the server where the web site is situated. Also FTP is used to download programs and files to your computer from a server.

How do I use FTP?

To use FTP you will need to install FTP software on your computer. There are many freely available FTP programs on the Internet such as, FTP explorer (http://www.ftpx.com) and Smart FTP (http://www.smartftp.com).

How do I connect with FTP?

Follow the steps below to connect to a server, to upload files using FTP Explorer:

Open FTP Explorer.

Click on the connect button on the toolbar or select connect from the Tools menu.

In the Profile Name text, enter a name to give your FTP connection.

In the Host Address text box enter the address of the server you are connecting to (this can either be the DNS entry or the IP Address).

Enter the Port number that the server accepts FTP connections on (the default port for FTP is 21).

Tick the Use PASV option, if your computer is behind a firewall, which does not allow external FTP connections.

Tick the Use Firewall option if your computer is located behind a firewall.

Either enter a user name for the FTP login or tick the Anonymous option (the anonymous option will only work if the server is set up to allow anonymous FTP connections – if this is selected go to step 10).

Enter the user’s password in the Password text box.

In the Initial path text box, enter the path on the server, where you want your connection to start at – this is optional.

In the Attempts text box enter the number of times to try the FTP connection if fails, you will need to have at least 1 in this text box.

In the Download path you can specify the path on your computer where to save the files downloaded from the server – this is optional, you can specify this later if you like.

To establish the connection with the server click on the Connect button.

How do I upload files using FTP?

Once you have established your connection with the server the next step is to upload your files to the server. The following describes how to do this:

Go to the path on the server where you want to upload your files to.

In the Tools menu click on the Upload button.

Select the file or files that you want to upload (to select more than one file hold down the CTRL key).

NOTE: You can also upload files by dragging and dropping them to the directory/folder on the server.

Click on the Open button. Your file will now be uploaded to the server. (You will see this uploading process in the dialog box.)

How do I download files using FTP?

You can also use FTP to download files to your computer from a server. The following describes how to download a file.

Make sure you are connected to the server.

Go to the file that you want to download.

Right click on the file and select Download To..

Select the path on your computer where you want the file to be saved to.

The file will now be downloaded to your computer. (You will see this downloading process happening in the dialog box.)

How do I end my connection?

You can end the connection by simply clicking on the Disconnect button on the tool bar or by clicking on Disconnect from the Tools menu.

Data Backup for Beginners

's 10pm. Do you know where your data is?

Data. Small bits of information clustered together to make Word files, documents,pictures, MP3s, HTML etc. We work on our computers every single day never sparing a thought for all those millions of chunks of data spread all over our hard disks. The data is there and it does it's job.

Until of course the data is not there anymore.