Web Hosting UK Blog

Blog of Uk Web Hosting company.

What Is Shared Hosting?

November 9, 2010 9:53 pm /

Shared web hosting is one of the cheapest types of web hosting accounts because it offers several users a pool off resources. This means that many webmasters have their sites hosted using a certain portion of the resources allowed. Each user is given a certain amount of bandwidth and disk space with shared web hosting and it’s low price is what makes it the most common type of web hosting around. This is especially true for users who only have one or two small websites that need to be hosted.

Usually, larger companies which have multiple web sites need dedicated hosting because shared web hosting does not offer enough disk space or bandwidth to run a lot of sites with. Also, most of the larger companies have their own servers in some cases and choose to use something like colocation hosting as a good alternative. People who have personal blogs or discussion forums often choose the shared web hosting option as it is the most affordable for their purpose. In addition, a lot of people just starting out with web pages choose the shared hosting option as it is the easiest and offers the most support for the money spent.

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Managed or Unmanaged Web Hosting?

November 7, 2010 9:52 pm /

This is a very important question to ask yourself before choosing a web hosting plan. First of all, if you have no experience managing a web site, you might be better off choosing a managed option because a managed web hosting service will do just that, manage your web hosting account for you so that you do not have to. It can be a tedious task for someone who is more of a novice at running web sites to try and keep everything together and do the things which need to be done to maintain a website.

On the other hand, managed web hosting is a lot more expensive than unmanaged web hosting which is why a lot of people who have someone to help them, or who have enough experience to get by with, choose unmanaged web hosting. In fact, unmanaged web hosting is significantly cheaper than the managed option and this is definitely something for people on a tight budget to keep in mind. There are some hosting services that offer more support than others as well. This is why it is very important to research each hosting company well before jumping into any hosting account, whether it is managed or not.

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Finding Trustworthy Web Hosting Review Sites

November 5, 2010 9:52 pm /

There are hundreds of sites out there which proclaim to offer solid reviews of web hosting sites. Unfortunately these sites are not all created equally. Many of them are either biased in order to sell you a web hosting package through their affiliate sites or they do not have the right kind of information. In order to find a review site which will offer you true and unbiased information, look for one that offers reviews based on personal experience. Pay attention to how many users have written reviews to each site. Also, when you do find a good site, make sure you read all the reviews and don’t judge a web hosting company simply because of one bad review.

Finding trustworthy web sites for any reason is a daunting task but looking for a review site about a web hosting service is even harder. This is mainly because so many of the hosting sites put out there own faux review sites in order to draw new business. It isn’t surprising after all, they are web hosting companies, it is quite simple for them to publish a review site that is not associated with them or does not carry their name.

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The Disadvantages of Free Web Hosting

November 3, 2010 9:52 pm /

There are many companies out there which offer free web hosting. This can be a wonderful thing for someone who is on an extremely tight budget. However, there are some things you should know prior to taking a free web hosting account. Most web hosting companies that offer this free hosting use ads and pop ups in order to pay for the hosting. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to offer their service for free. This may be alright for you but you have to think of your visitors. Will they enjoy being bombarded with ads and pop ups? Also, will the ads have anything at all to do with your topic? Even worse, will the ads be in direct competition with you?

Even if you are alright with that ads and are able to swallow this aspect of free web hosting, there is also no guarantee on a free account. This means no one is going to be held accountable if they should just happen to drop your site. This will result in a loss of everything you have on their server including all the images and files you have uploaded to your site. This is a risk many webmasters do not want to take and that is why they often opt for paid web hosting.

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Beware of Web Hosting Nightmares

November 1, 2010 9:52 pm /

Many people go out and obtain the cheapest web hosting possible. This may be fine for someone who is only using their website for personal reasons but an online store, especially one with multiple locations can suffer greatly from things like server downtime and instability. Everyone who has an online store knows that every second of downtime is detrimental to their business. This means that you could find yourself losing a lot of revenue due to downtime and other server nightmares like lag and slow page loads. You can look back on your own experiences to know what I am referring to. Just count the amount of times you have left a website and sought an alternate site due to becoming annoyed with how long the page took to load.

Your customers will do the same thing. For this purpose you should be sure you use a web hosting service which is known for very little downtime. Obviously no web hosting service will ever be 100% free of downtime; this is a fact of life for webmasters. However, if you use a hosting service which has a high incident of downtime it may be time to change the company you are using.

Posted in: Uncategorized

Why Page Content is important for SEO

December 21, 2009 1:55 pm /

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the term used to describe the promotion of a website to ensure that it appears as high as possible in the search engine results.  There are many search engines including Yahoo!, Bing and Google.  The more promotion of a site that you do, the higher in theory it should appear on the results.

A lot of people assume that when they search for something in a search engine, that the most relevant result appears first.  But this is not always the case.  Websites have to fight tooth and nail to get their websites to appear on the first page of results and in most cases competition is tough.  However, it is a job that must be done as research has shown that most people use these search engines to find information on the internet.  The most popular search engine of them all is Google with more than 80 percent of searches done through the Google search engine.

Search engines use various methods to rank a website but the main goal is to make sure that relevant information is brought to the user.  Some of the things that search engines look at when ranking websites are the content of the pages; the words in the title; the words in the URL; amount of internal links; amount of external links; highlighted words or keywords; text used to get the internal and external links and also the age of the domain name.

There are many other things that the various search engines use to establish the page rank of a website from the design of the site and the use of images etc.  You can check online for lists of items which may play a role in how a website is ranked by the search engines.  One of the major factors for page ranking however, is content.  Your page content must be of good quality to enable your website to be ranked highly.  After all, the point of a search engine is to provide the user with relevant information from their search.

Search engines have a way of establishing whether page content is relevant to the customer so it would be a good idea to write your content with the user in mind and not to focus too much on what you think the search engine wants to see.  That way, you can ensure that your page content is relevant and the search engines will pick up on this.  If you want your website to rank highly than the key is to make sure your content is the best it can be.  There are other things to work on too but content can help your site to get closer to that elusive first page of results.

Posted in: SEO

Why Employ An SEO Expert?

December 21, 2009 1:54 pm /

If you are new to the online business and are setting up a website to sell a service or product you will need to consider using search engine optimisation (SEO) to improve your websites performance.  If you know nothing about SEO and are desperate to get started, then it might be a good idea to employ the services of an SEO expert.  A website needs to be created and designed in order to sell products or services online.  However, a website will generate little or no custom unless it is promoted in such a way that it is ranked highly on the results pages of the search engines.  To do this you need to use SEO techniques.

Many people starting out in the online business world are unaware of SEO to promote a website but the more they delve into this world, they will begin to hear more and more about search engine optimisation.  Unfortunately there are a number of mistakes that the new online entrepreneur will make before getting SEO right and this is why it may be necessary to hire an expert in SEO.  The main aim of SEO is to get your website to the top of the search engine results pages and an SEO expert knows exactly how to do this. Making sure your website is at the top of the results pages can increase the amount of products you sell or the number of clicks you get.

SEO is not as simple as it might sound.  It can take a lot of time and effort to become familiar with techniques that work and those that don’t.  Certain keywords will be more effective than others and some keywords will have far too much competition for you to bypass those already at the top of the results pages.  An SEO expert will know which keywords people are searching for and which ones will attract the search engines.

Search engine optimisation is quite complex and involves some knowledge of how search engines work and what they are looking for.  Becoming knowledgeable in this area can take time but an SEO expert will know how to manipulate every inch of the system to get you the best page ranking possible.  They will also know how to make sure that the back links to your site are relevant and will have a positive effect on your ranking in the search engines.

If you have time and patience you can look after search engine optimisation for your sites yourself but if you want to make sure that your website gets off to a flying start then it would be wise to use the professional services of an SEO expert.  It will be money well spent as you will be safe in the knowledge that you are giving your website the best chance to get right up on the first page of search engine results.

Posted in: SEO

Which Web Host is Better – Shared or Dedicated?

December 21, 2009 1:53 pm /

Whatever website you create you have to have a web host.  There are many different types of web host including free web hosting, shared web hosting and dedicated web hosting.  If you are serious about your website and want it to look professional, then you should not even consider free web hosting.  Free web hosts offer space on their server at no charge in exchange for placing ads on your site which can give your website an amateurish look and feel.

A dedicated web host will give your website sole use of a server while a shared web host will allow you to share space on the server with a host of other customers and their websites.  It is up to you to decide which one is best for you and your site.

Every server has a unique IP address (internet protocol address) which is a series of numbers separated by dots and every website must be stored on a server.  This means that your website will have the same IP address as the server on which it is held.  A dedicated web host will provide you with that IP address plus all the resources of that server for you alone to use.  You can decide whether you want to use that server for one site or for many sites but each of the sites on the server will have the same IP address.  A dedicated host will also mean that all the space and bandwidth will be dedicated entirely to you and your websites.  Common users of dedicated web hosts are large companies that require a lot of space and to whom security is of the utmost importance.

Any website on a shared server will be sharing the IP address with any other site on that server regardless of whether it is your site or not.  You will be sharing space on the server with other customers and you will also be sharing bandwidth.  You will be allocated a specific amount of space each month to ensure that all sites on the server are getting adequate service.  If you go over the limit that has been set you could be penalised or shut down temporarily.

Depending on the amount of traffic that websites on the server are receiving, you will either have fast or low speeds.  If sites on the server have low traffic, then the pages on your site will load much quicker.  Requests to the server are dealt with on a first come first server basis so if other sites on the server have a lot of traffic, this could play a role in how your site is loaded.  However, shared hosting is obviously going to be less expensive than shared hosting as the cost of the server operation is divided out between all paying customers while dedicated server costs are covered solely by one person.

Which web host you choose will all depend on whether you have a large complex site and whether you can afford to pay for dedicated hosting?  But if you want more security and more features then dedicated would be the one for you while if you are a small company with a small site then shared hosting is the best option.

Posted in: Web Hosting

What to Look For In a Web Host

December 21, 2009 1:53 pm /

One of the most important aspects of your online business is choosing a good web host.  No matter what your website is for, be it business, personal or for other reasons, it is important that you choose a quality web hosting service as this can have an impact on the success or failure of your site.  You should make sure before you begin that you have chose the best possible web host for your sites as switching afterwards may not be that easy.

So although you may be tempted to choose the first web hosting service that seems to be offering a good service, you would probably be wiser to be patient and make sure that the web host you choose is the best possible one.  Most new online entrepreneurs want to get up and running as quickly as possible but choosing a less than perfect web host can set you back further down the road.  There are several things you can look for to make sure you are getting a good quality service.

Check out the pricing structure that a web host is offering.  Many of these companies offer low prices to entice the customer to sign up with them and once the customer realises that they are not getting all the features they need, they will have to pay big for an upgrade.  Before choosing a web host make sure that the price you are paying includes unlimited bandwidth and space if possible or at least a large enough amount to accommodate the growth of your site.

You should also know whether the web hosting service you are choosing includes a free domain name for your site.  This can be great as long as you are planning to stay with that web host indefinitely.  Otherwise be wary of taking a free domain name that is linked to a particular web host as problems could arise if you ever wanted to switch web hosts.  You might be better off just paying for your domain name from a reputable domain registrar.

A good web host will offer support 24 hours a day.  It is preferable for some people to be able to contact the web host by phone so if this is how you prefer to contact a company, then make sure it is a service they provide.  You will find however, that the majority of web hosting companies only offer web and email support.  However you prefer to contact your web hosting company is up to you but you should make sure that the service you prefer is a feature of their service.

It is worthwhile considering whether your web host offers add-ons.  As your business progresses you may want to add further features to your site and it is preferable to know at the beginning whether or not the web host will be able to facilitate your future requirements.  Checking out all these things can help you to make sure you are getting the best web hosting service available.

Posted in: Web Hosting

Web Hosting Reviews

December 21, 2009 1:52 pm /

You may have been told to look for reviews before choosing a web host for your websites and this is sound advice.  Before you commit to a web host you want to ensure that the host you are considering is reliable and can offer you a good quality service.  You will want to make sure that your website is safe and secure in the hands of the web host you opt for so before you choose it is a good idea to see what others have to say about them.  Looking at reviews is a great way to see what others think about individual web hosts and to hear about problems that people have encountered and how the web host dealt with these problems.  You may stumble across someone who requires similar things to you and it could be beneficial to hear how about which web host they are using and how they have found them.

Taking time out to research reviews will be a big help in the long run.  It is important that you get the best web host from the beginning and it can be a tough job trying to compare all the offers and features that individual web hosts have available.  This is where reviews come in.  They can save you time and effort and help you to get the best deal.

You will probably come across concise or full reviews.  A concise review will be a summary of the web hosts features, price and the main points about the company.  You will be told about support, customer service and tools available.  A review website will usually have a comparison tool so that you can compare different features from various web hosts.  Full reviews will offer more in-depth information about the web host.  A full review will tell you how the company is performing compared to its competitors so it is a good idea to check this out once you have chosen a web host from the concise reviews.

When using reviews to choose the best web host you will need to beware of scams.  Some web hosts will use scams to get you to use them and will make up fake reviews to entice the customer to choose them.  Make sure that you are using a reputable review site to research and view reviews.

Keep a note of the date of the review as it may be that the information in the review is no longer relevant.  Sometimes you may find a great review, only to see that it was actually posted years earlier.  Try to use reviews that are as current as possible in order to get the most up to date information and comparisons.  You wouldn’t want to choose a web host only to find out that the review you have looked at was posted a long time ago and that now the company has deteriorated and can no longer offer the service it once did.

Posted in: Web Hosting