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Search Engines Crawl Deeper
Until recently, you couldn't access all the content in the World Wide Web because dynamic databases and many file formats were out of reach for Web crawlers. This is changing, as the Web morphs into a wider collection of data with audio and video files, as well as PDF, Excel, Power Point and more.
While the "surface Web" contained only text documents, major search engines now have the technology to index the "deep Web," a vast depository of previously untapped content in dynamic databases.
The difference between the surface and deep Web is bo... (View)
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ISPmonitor
Server Status Report (Last24hs) |
Top 10 Web Hosting Providers |
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WEB.com Web.com's award-winning website solutions include a variety of integrated online tools and services including website design and web publishing, web hosting, business email, domain name registration, web marketing and ecommerce services specifically designed for sm...(more info) |
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HostDime Through various partnerships of leading companies in the software and bandwidth industries, HostDime has evolved as a central source for web hosting solutions. Presently ranked among the top 50 hosts in the world by hostcount.com, housing over 3,000 servers, and ho...(more info) |
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HostMonster HostMonster has been providing hosting solutions to thousands of business and personal web sites since 1996. Our internet hosting package helps businesses and individuals get high-powered service at a fraction of the cost....(more info) |
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Ipower Our four world-class quality Tier 1 Internet Data Centers are optimized to provide an industry-leading web, data, and applications hosting environment. Our Internet based end-to-end solutions enable small and medium sized enterprises (SME's) to build, promote, mana...(more info) |
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Bluehost BlueHost has been providing hosting solutions to thousands of business and personal web sites since 1996. Our internet hosting package helps businesses and individuals get high-powered service at a fraction of the cost....(more info) |
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WebHostingPad At Web Hosting Pad, we are very confident in our products and services. We provide a fast, reliable and comprehensive service that we believe you will be completely satisfied with. Webhostingpad.com was formed in 2005 with a team of very successful and proven indus...(more info) |
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Server Pronto ServerPronto is a dedicated hosting subsidiary of Infolink, one of a few profitable Data Center Corporations in the world. From it's beginning in January 1999, Infolink served the "Value Orientated" segment of the Internet market. Not by offering a sub-standard pro...(more info) |
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EasyCGI Many hosting companies outsource their web hosting needs or keep their servers in a remote location. At Easy CGI we maintain our own Data Center located in the same building as our corporate headquarters. This allows us to quickly assess and resolve any problems th...(more info) |
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Easynet! Easynet is one of the leading providers of web hosting solutions and services for global business. Thousands of businesses, from all over the World, rely on our advanced, easy-to-use, reliable hosting solutions. Easynet offers a full line of solutions for personal,...(more info) |
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iPowerWeb "iPowerWeb is a respected leader in the IT/ASP industry, which includes product lines such as hosting, access, total Web solution, e-commerce, content, marketing, and financial services. iPowerWeb provides all these products as an ASP in a co-branded, private label...(more info) |
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WEB.com
Web.com's award-winning website solutions include a variety of integrated online tools and services including website design and web publishing, web hosting, business email, domain name registration, web marketing and ecommerce services specifically designed for small business owners that don’t have design or technical expertise. With our easy-to-use point and click S ... (more info) |
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Too often web hosts talk about bandwidth and data transfer in the same breath but truth be known they are different although very closely related. Bandwidth is how much data can be transferred at a time and data transfer is how much data is being transferred.
Think of it this way. If bandwidth were a bridge, then the bigger the bridge is the more vehicles can pass through it. While data transfer is the number of vehicles allowed on the bridge in say a month. In essence, data transfer is the consumption of bandwidth.
How It Affects Your Site
The less bandwidth you have, the slower your site takes to load regardless of the visitor’s connection type. If you have more visitors, some of them will have to wait their turn. The least data transfer you have, the more often you’ll find your site unavailable because you’re reached the maximum allowed until a new month rolls by or you upgrade your account.
Determining Your Requirements
Usually when a host talks about bandwidth, they are referring to your transfer. So you need to figure out what is sufficient for your site to function. You’ll need to gather some information; fairly easy if you already have a site. Most of this information is available from your traffic history. If you don’t have an existing site, provide an optimistic estimate if you intend to heavily promote the site. Then get ready for some math.
Find out the daily averages of: -
• Number of visitors / expected number of visitors
• Page size including the graphics of the page
• Page views / expected pages viewed by each visitor
Then, multiply them as follows:
Visitors x Page size x Page views x 30 days = Monthly Website Transfer
You should also throw in a small margin or error there to take into account email traffic and your own uploads to the server. If you offer downloads, then you should add the following:
Average/Expected downloads x File Size x 30 days = Monthly Download Transfer
Unlimited Plans
Bandwidth is very expensive. All hosts are limited by their own allocations. Thinking back to the bridge. What happens is each visitor to your site will be given a smaller lane to transfer the data, creating many tiny lanes therefore “unlimited”. The more visitors you have the smaller each lane will be, which makes each visitor wait for the page to load.
More often than not there is little choice over your bandwidth as your host controls this. Some hosts may limit the number of simultaneous connections so in affect slowing down your site and refusing some visitors. This is called throttling. If you’re concerned about this, you should ask the host how they control bandwidth usage or purchase a package with more data transfer. If you use HostVoice.net (link:http://hostvoice.net), this information is easily obtainable with one request.
Reducing Transfers
On the other hand, you can reduce your transfer amount by building simpler, more efficient websites and optimizing your graphics. Refrain from fancy flash presentations or streaming audio. Use CSS, call JavaScript externally instead of embedding in every page. Remove unwanted tags, white space and comments. Limit your META tags to those absolutely necessary. Having too many keywords is not search engine friendly. Besides many search engines will only review the first few and ignore the rest.
Another good idea is to cache your website but you might want to set an expiry date in the HTTP headers so the browser will refresh the content after a certain time. Use mod-gzip. It could save you as much as 40% of your bandwidth. Out of control robots can also suck down your bandwidth like a black hole. So use robots.txt to keep spiders in check. |
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Which is better Unix Web Hosting; Linux? Windows?
On the Internet there is a tremendous amount of argument over which operating system is the best for web hosting. There are anti-windows haters, there are FreeBSD fanatics and more. But which is the best? The truth is it depends on what you are doing.
The servers which run the web sites and the server software all run on a computer program known as the operating system. If you are running a personal computer chances are that you are running Windows ME, XP, NT or some other similar computer program. That is the operating system of your computer. With web hosting servers they also need a operating system and there are essentially three different competing versions.
Windows Option
The first version is Windows. Microsoft makes an operating system especially for servers. This operating systems allows true integration with Microsoft's products and also allows web sites to run Active Server Pages (basically computer scripts for dynamic web site content). Microsoft's server also allows integration with its SQL database, one of the more powerful databases. The downside of Microsoft's server software is that it costs several thousands of dollars for each server. Available options include Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server and 2003 Server amoung others. Windows is best for new administrators because of its simple user interface. Additional software will cost extra such as: firewall, remote admin programs, ASP Encrypt, ASPMail, and many more required applications to make your server production ready.
Windows Hosting Benefits
- ASP Support
- ASP.NET Support
- Powerful SQL Server Database
- Access Database Support
- PHP and MySQL Compatible
- IIS Web Server
Linux Option
The second version is Linux. Linux is actually a common name for a variety of operating systems. Linux was, and is, developed by a community of individuals which come together to commonly write the main part of Linux. After this main part is developed, and continually refined, additional parts are added to the program to customize it for whatever purposes the end user wants. A variety of companies market Linux and you might have heard of a few: Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, etc. Linux is good in that it is compatible with the popular programming language PHP. It is also favored by some web hosters in that in general it has a good security record and tends on average to be a stable operating system. Linux software is free - note this is no longer true for Red Hat Enterprise versions. Linux is still free in other distributions such as Fredora and Debian.
Linux additional software is generally free or low cost; APF Firewall, Apache, Sendmail, BIND and much more. We recommend you use a virus scanner such as Clam or F-Prot and MailScanner. Linux servers are very hard to administer compared to Windows. Everything is done through remote shell access (like Dos, remember Dos!). There are no pretty interfaces or buttons to click on - just a huge amount of commands. Although with all this console power you have much more control of your actual server compared to Windows.
Linux Hosting Benefits
- PHP and MySQL Support
- Apache Web Server
- Mod Rewrite Support
- Chmod file permissions
The third version is Unix-based operating systems. The last version mentioned here is very close in comparison to the Linux versions. In fact there are probably more similarities than differences. The main difference is the history of how the two versions came into being. Linux is an offshoot of the Unix operating system, where the Unix-based operating systems are refinements of Unix itself. Linux basically is a cousin to Unix-based operating systems. The main Unix-based operating systems are FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The selling point of these operating system is that they tend to be very stable once installed. The downpoint is that they are very technical to install. OpenBSD also has the reputation of very secure in that in the last six years it had only one security hole in the software itself. But OpenBSD does not allow everything; that it you have to sacrifice some flexibility for security. These operating systems are free as well.
So which is the best? Well it depends on what you need. If you want the tightest security you can get then OpenBSD or Linux is probably for you. But it is very technical to install and you will not have a lot of frills. How about compatibility with all of Microsoft's products? Well then Windows is the best for you, but be prepared in that it will cost a lot--the other operating systems here all are free. How about compatibity with PHP? Well then look at Linux or FreeBSD. You see it is not so much as which operating system is the best, but rather which operating system is best for what I need to do. |
Useful hosting documents:
IIS Hosting - Security and Programming Countermeasures (download)
Apache web hosting +SSL+PHP+fp (download)
Apache web server overview - HOWTO (download)
Getting Started With Your Virtual Dedicated Server (PLESK)(download) |
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