Friday, May 28, 2010
Website builders are an easy way to create a basic web site for free. There are hundreds of website builders, many of which are free. Weebly is one of the most popular free website builders because it is easy to use, has a tons of features, and doesn't come with a binding contract.
Creating a basic website with Weebly is extremely easy – you just select a template and the page elements, enter your text, upload your images and this is it. There are tons of free templates in many categories, so it is quite probable that you will find a web site template to your liking and with some minor modifications you can build a professionally-looking site in less than an hour.
Most of the functionality is drag and drop and no HTML knowledge is required. This means that everybody can make a simple site with Weebly. Well, website builders will hardly make web designers redundant but it is true that thanks to such great website builders, creating a basic web site is a piece of cake even for users with no design background.
Weebly Offers Many Advanced Features Other Free Website Builders Don't Have.
In addition to giving you the chance to create a simple web site very quickly, Weebly offers many advanced features, which go beyond a basic site. For instance, if you know HTML, you can make the changes with the integrated HTML editor. However, if you do this, be careful that you don't spoil the template you have started with.
Some of the other advanced features you will find useful are related to adding multimedia to your site, generating revenue, or adding such advanced features as polls or feed readers.
Unlike many other free website builders, which come as a part of a paid web hosting package, Weebly is really free. You can create your site with it and publish it with them or on your own domain. You can even download the ready site locally and keep a copy of it.
The footer that the site has been created with Weebly can't be removed in the free version but this is a minor issue in comparison to all the benefits Weebly offers. Weebly is really one of the best free website builders and it is worth trying it. Webs is also a good website builder, so if you feel that Weebly is not exactly what you like, you could give Webs a try and see which one you like more.
Source: brighthub.com
Author: ADA
Media Temple is emerging as one of the more popular web hosting companies. Whether you are looking for the best web host for a new website, or are looking to switch your existing website to a new host, Media Temple may be right for you.Media Temple has quickly become one of the more popular web hosts on the market, competing highly with sites like Go Daddy, Host Gator, and Blue Host. Rather than being a traditional web host, Media Temple sets out to be a unique web host, with MT specific control panels, interfaces, and hosting management. However, are all of these features worth it? A visit to the Media Temple homepage will quickly prove that MT's prices are a bit higher than the industry average for web hosts.
Media Temple offers several hosting plans that are slightly higher priced than traditional web hosts. For example:
Go Daddy
* Unlimited Plan ($6.99/month) * 150GB Space * 1500GB Transfer * 1000 Email Accounts
Media Temple (MT)
* Grid Service Basic ($20.00/month) * 100GB Space * 1TB Transfer * 1000 Email Accounts
From the above comparison, it's quite clear that Go Daddy is much cheaper than Media Temple; not that $13.00 extra a month is a lot to pay, but still, Go Daddy's plan offers more space and more transfer for less than half the price of MT.
Like Go Daddy, MT uses a unique hosting software, rather then the traditional Cpanel interface that most hosts use. This can be an advantage for some, and a disadvantage for others. Cpanel is the most popular web hosting user-end software for good reason. It puts all hosting management tools in one intuitive spot.
Media Temple's unique interface takes some getting used to, but does prove to be effective once learned. Many may prefer MT's smooth navigation over Go Daddy as MT is a bit simpler.
As far as a web host, Media Temple does offer a significant amount of unique features that you won't find anywhere else. They have their own marketing methods, which represent MT as being a premium web hosting company. Some notable features are: Django, MySQL GridContainer, and Ruby on Rails GridContainer.
Media Temple gets a below average rating only because of their high prices. Some may believe that MT is worth the extra money for a quality service, but remember, MT has received it fair share of negative reviews, just like any other web host.
Media Temple Coupons, Promos, and Discounts
Rating Good
As far as Media Temple discounts, you can occasionally find coupons and promos to get MT hosting at a cheaper rate. In some cases, the MT coupons and promos offer a significant discount, narrowing the price gap between Media Temple and other hosting sites like Go Daddy and Hostgator. Media Temple coupons can normally save you up to 20% off, which is a considerable amount.
Media Temple Tech Support and Marketing
Rating Good
MT Grid ServersMedia Temple tech support is fairly good. Things like phone wait times are still common, but every web host has support hold time. Media Temple's support staff is a bit above Go Daddy, and comparable to Hostgator. As far as knowledge, Media Temple support is able to advise you and help you out the majority of the time. As far as marketing, Media Temple is also better at not bugging you or emailing as many offers and marketing bulk letters as Go Daddy.
Media Temple is known for their web response team as well. If you post any problems that you may have with Media Temple on a forum or web hosting site, often times an MT representative will post a reply that may be beneficial. MT support can be bad at times and can be good at times, just like any other web host; but for the most part, MT takes extra care when monitoring their customers satisfaction.
Media Temple Scalability
Rating Good
MT prides themselves on being a scalable web host. In that aspect, they do a great job at flexing to the demands of a website. If the traffic to your website overpowers your current hosting plan, your site will temporarily scale to a higher level hosting plan. If this becomes a trend, and your website grows to higher traffic rates, Media Temple will offer to upgrade your account to a plan with better options.
One thing to note, other web hosts offer plan upgrades as well. Media Temple simply takes a unique approach on website traffic scalability, allowing you to upgrade the minute your website may require higher hosting. All it takes is one phone call to support to upgrade to a higher plan.
Media Temple Review Conclusion
Rating Average
Media Temple (MT) is a quality web host. Their prices are higher, but they make up for that in customer support. There are some other web hosts, such as Hostgator, that provide equal quality tech support to MT and offer more affordable hosting solutions. Upon reviewing several forums and web hosting sites such as Hostjury, the mass customer satisfaction for MT is hot and cold. Being a more expensive, premium web host, MT's customer satisfaction rate could be better. Because MT has such a focused web watch team, you may want to also look out for planted positive reviews.
The recommendation is to go with MT for business sites that get a significant amount of traffic. For basic web hosting and WordPress blogs, MT is not the best solution, as you can get all of the features you need from a more affordable web host. In addition, if you are running a high scale website, you may need to go with an even more expensive plan than the basic $20/month grid service. MT is an above average web host with some unique features, but that doesn't necessarily make it better than a traditional Cpanel web host, in most people's cases.
Source: brighthub.com
author: Nicholas
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Microsoft developed and owns the Windows operating system. Linux is open source and generally free. This means it can often be more expensive to set up and run a Windows server. However, this fact doesn't really affect you unless you are actually setting up a server for yourself and if you're reading this article then I'm guessing that it's safe to assume you're not. This article is going to offer information for those trying to decide which hosting company to go with. The cost involved in running a server does not affect the cost of a web-hosting package as much as you may think. Despite the general opinion that Windows servers are more expensive to run, buying a Windows hosting package can often turn out to be just as cheap or even cheaper than an equivalent Linux hosting package.
Some people naturally assume that because their PC runs Windows they need to buy a Windows hosting package. This isn't true. Access to your web account will most likely be through FTP or a control panel and both servers support these methods. The main difference is that some of the FTP commands are slightly different between Linux and Windows and some FTP programs will be designed with one or the other in mind. This means you may occasionally find that when you try and get your FTP program to do something it returns an error message, but it won't happen very often.
Your choice of server platforms should be dictated by the use to which you intend to put it. The majority of web features run fine on both platforms including PHP, mySQL, POP3 etc. If you intend to create your site using ASP, FrontPage, the .NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MSSQL, or any of the other Microsoft proprietary technologies then you probably need to use a Windows host. There is limited support for a number of these technologies in Linux, but they can be expensive and are usually lacking in features. It is probably worth considering the fact that if you use server specific technologies and then change hosts you'll have a much harder time of it than if you use technologies that can be run on any system. Having it run generic technologies removes the need to focus on specifics and allows you to focus on the quality of service itself.
The reliability and stability of the different platforms have been the topic of many long arguments. The main reason that Windows is seen as being insecure is that it is the most widely used operating system for home PC's. People spend more time looking for flaws in the most common system. With Linux being the most common server type, it has a surprising number of successful hack attempts made on it. In the end the security of both platforms comes down to the competency of the system administrators. If you are security minded then you'll do better to make sure that the hosting company is reputable and highly skilled than to worry about the server they use.
In terms of performance there's not a huge difference between the two servers. Linux reportedly performs faster because Windows (as usual) attempts to offer an 'all in one' package instead of the extendable Linux implementation. You'll generally not notice a difference but if performance is of utmost importance to you then maybe this will influence your decision.
I've come to the conclusion that unless you are specifically using features that are unique to one platform or another your time will be much better spent looking for a really good quality host than a really good quality server. Developers are constantly improving both Linux and Windows so they should be fairly close in terms of features, security, and reliability for a long time. It's the people implementing them that you should be basing your decision on.
Source:www.askwebhosting.com
Colocation - also colocated, collocated, collocation - is the placement of your own server(s) and/or your network equipment in an Internet data center (or colocation facility) along with hundreds of others servers. The Data Center is managed to provide reliable networking, power, connectivity and security services. You can access you machines by going to the facility at any time.
Colocation has several advantages for the customer
# High speed connections via multiple carriers to prevent downtime
# Guaranteed power supply incorporating battery UPS for short term combined with an onsite diesel generator and sub-station for extended outages
# Servers can be installed and online immediately
# Additional servers can be easily added as your needs grow
# All services are monitored by network engineers 24 x 7
# Colocation facility uses electronic access security & security guards to protect your equipment
Colocation Cost
Colocation requires an initial investment for the server, plus ongoing hardware and software maintenance. In addition, each Month, you have to pay for the space (Rack Space) and the bandwidth used by your server(s).
Space used by your server(s)
Your server(s) will be mounted in the rack. A rack is a metal framework that houses electronic equipment and usually contains bays designed to piece of equipment like a server.
The space used by your server(s) is measured in Rack Units (RU or "U-Space"). This is the unit of measurement used for defining the vertical space used. A 'U' is equivalent to 1.75 inches (4.45cm).
# 1U Server= 1.75" of Vertical Rack Space
# 2U = 3.5" of Vertical Rack Space
# 4U = 7.00" of Vertical Rack Space
# A full rack can contains 40 to 42U
# 1/4 Rack=10U (10 servers of 1U)
# Half rack =20 U (20 Servers of 1U)
So, if you have to buy your own server you have to choose a rackmount server (or rack mounted server) it has been designed to live on a rack.
What is Bandwidth ?
Bandwidth is a measure of data transfer. Computer data is fundamentally measured in bits, and bytes. Understanding the units of measure is necessary before you can do anything else. A Byte is simply 8 bits. In the world of computers measurements are conveniently represented by powers of two, while in the real world powers of ten are prevalent. This caused the confusing definition of "Kilobyte" to mean 1024 bytes instead of 1000 bytes as you might expect. Compounding the confusion, a Megabyte" is 1024 Kilobytes, or 1048576 bytes. A Gigabyte is 1024 Megabytes, or 1048576 Kilobytes, or 106954752 bytes. The number of bits or bytes per unit of time is referred to as bandwidth. Thus you see numbers such as 1.5Mbps (1,500,000 bits per second) 28.8Kb/s (28.8 Thousand bits per second) or 3GB/month (Three Gigabytes per month.)
The first lesson of understanding bandwidth is not to confuse Bits and Bytes. If you do, your numbers will be off by a factor of 8, which is usually pretty significant. Many vendors quote numbers in bits, because the result is 8 times larger and makes things look more impressve. Usually a lower-case 'b' indicates bit, and an upper case 'B' indicates byte, but you can't always rely upon that.
The second lesson is to understand that 'K' technically doesn't mean 1000, but everyone usually acts like it does. Minor discrepencies in numbers can usually be accounted for by this assumption. Unless you're talking about huge amounts of data, it's unlikely to make much difference. (less than 10% for even a Terabyte)
How is measured the monthly bandwidth usage
There are different schemes for paying for bandwidth.
I -Real Data transfer ( Burstable Bandwidth)
Your host will provide you a graph ( usually MRTG graph) wich shows average bandwidth incoming and outgoing traffic in real-time. On this graph you will read several data as the Monthly Average Out and the Monthly average In.
To measure the real Monthly Data transfer used you have to use use the following equation:
# Monthly Average Out + Monthly Average In / 8 bits x 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 30.5 days = total bandwidth used for the month.
Note, some host providers counts only the Monthly Average IN or OUT. With them, you can save a lot of money.
Sample of Measure of the real Monthly data transfer
# Mrtg Graphs shows : Monthly average IN + OUT =1024 Kbps = 1 Mbps
# 1024 kbps/8*60*60*24*30.5= 337305600 Kilobytes /1048576= 321 GB.
Find here some conversion:
# 1Mbps = 320GB
# 10Mbps= 3200GB
# 20Mbps =6400GB
# 50Mbps=16000GB
# 100Mbps =32000GB
II -Capped Bandwidth ( also unlimited transfer)
Another common system is capped bandwidth, is simply to pay for the bandwidth that's available. For example, you might get 1 Mbps of bandwidth capped, and you can use all of it or none of it and pay the same amount. The network administrator will program the router to cap your usage at that amount.
III -The 95th percentile
95th Percentile is a method of measuring bandwidth that bases your bill on peak utilization. Your bandwidth is measured from the switch or router and recorded in a log file. At the end of the month, your usage statistics are sorted, and the top 5%, or 37 hours, of data is thrown away, and that next measurement becomes your 'utilization' for the month.
So, if you had a great weekend promoting your site, and used 3mb/sec for two days, you would be billed for the 3mb/sec rate -- potentially much more expensive than your average bandwidth utilization or actual utilization.
Source:www.askwebhosting.com