dotRoot Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 (edited) Long read, but pretty much everything you want to know This will hopefully help people out there know exactly what they are getting into. Just because a webhosting provider sells at cheap prices with lots of features doesn't mean they are good to choose. First off you should ask yourself what you actually need. Some things to think about are: space, datatransfer/bandwidth, eCommerce, PHP, ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, etc., etc. Today most providers give you a lot more features than they used to. Not too long ago CGI was considered more of a premium add-on, although its just standard now and nobody ever uses it really. But take .NET for instance, if you need it you just narrowed you search down to Windows Hosting, so its very important you would make sure it at least Windows IIS. ColdFusion just limits you to ColdFusion, but most people need not worry about that anyway. Also do you want to go with shared, Virtual Private Servers (VPS), self managed dedicated, or managed dedicated? I'll explain the differences in a bit. You can use someone like Host Search to give you a lot of hosts that provide what you need. The point is that you want to get atleast what you want from a provider. eCommerce I figured I'd cover some of this because a lot of people get confused. But say you need eCommerce. Well this host says they have scripts and such for eCommerce carts and all kinds of stuff. Most people think "exactly what I need to build my online store", but not quite. The customers can now shop around and store what they want to buy and at what price. Well does this cart have a billing/customer database? Does it allow you to easily manage the accounts and maybe even support recurring billing? Its very important you know your cart. Some examples would be: MBill, Whois Cart, and Miva Merchant. Do your research on them...just usually takes a google. So now you are halfway there. How are you going to actually charge your customer and get money? For that you need a (e-check, credit card, etc.) Gateway Provider. They do things such as check to see if its a valid payment and even charge it from them to you. Some of the big ones are Authorize Net, 1Shopping Cart, and of course Verisign's Trust Gateway. There are some 'free' ones out that cost in transaction fees and no actual upfront cost like: Pay Pal and Pay Systems. Bandwidth What most providers normally mean by this is monthly data transfer. So how much do you need? Unlimited?!...probably not. One thing is that if you only get 50-500 hits a month and your total website consists of 30 MB, then 15 GB is enough. You can use stuff such as gZip to compress your webpages and such to lower this AND speed up your page views. This won't effect your storage space though. Unlimited?! Well everyone used to provide this until people who actually read the TOS' or whom's account was cancelled for using too much of their unlimited bandwidth caught on that "hey this is worse than limited, because they can disconnect you or charge you fees for any number they want to!". It is worse to use unlimited in most cases than limited period. Usually the 'unlimited' bandwidth is cheap and is on some crappy Tier/Backbone provider anyway. Space Well do you really need 50 GB? Of course for all those mp3s and 'secret' zip files! Well for one some providers limit which file extensions you can upload or upload limit per file. Also providers will look at what you have if you use a lot of bandwidth. And for that 'Unlimited' space, see above, most of the same stuff applies. How do you check the webhost out? Now that you know what you want, you'll need to know from whom do you want it? You should really check them out before going with them soley forfeatures. First thing I do is tracert the host. You can do this in the command prompt by typing: tracert whatever.com. Or you can use something like: Symantec's Visual Route for free. Check how many hops they are away. The fewer the better. Also look at the hostmask, make sure its not whatever.DSL.ISP.com or whatever as well. Do some check and go to the base URLs one or two hops in front of that domain. That's THEIR bandwidth provider. Make sure they are koshier. Next I'd WHOIS them. Linux users usually can just type: whois whatever.com in the console, windows users can use something like GeekTools. Make sure their WHOIS information doesn't look fake or even give them a call off the phone numbers listed. If they have something to hide, then you don't want them, they've lied to you. Also check their NAMESERVERs. Do a WHOIS on those too to make sure that they aren't a reseller or something unprofessional. If they use a 3rd party DNS Service then most likely you don't want them either. Its ok if they do use more than 2 nameservers and the 3rd, 4th, etc. is from somewhere else, that just helps their site still resolves if one goes down. You can tracert them too and make sure they aren't the same machine. The whole point to requiring more than 1 name server on different IPs (and assumeing boxes) was in case one goes down. There is more you can do and I'll go into more if asked. But this is already so long most people won't read it. Shared, VPS, Dedicated Shared - Sharing a server with lots of other people. Virtual hosting. All the domain names are shared by the server and they all share the same IP (not always, you can still host multiple IPs off of one box). Cheapest solution and good for most people. Sometimes shell accounts are given which use CHOWN or windows permissions to emulate some sort of freedom. We call this in the industry "SSH Jail" VPS - Usually only a few partitions are on this server and 1 user per partition in which they have root/superadmin access. You can't usually reboot the machine, but you can add pretty much what you want and run what you want as long as too much memory and CPU isn't used. Good for high traffic sites and/or devs. Self Managed Dedicated - Your own server you rent. You are the root/superadmin. And as long as its within the provider's TOS you can do it. But you are on your own with everything minus the base install. Tech support usually costs about $150/hour. Good for game servers. Managed Dedicated - Your own server you rent. You are the root/superadmin. And as long as its within the provider's TOS you can do it. Tech support is included in your monthly rental usually. And if you don't want to do it, then you usually can just tell them to. Its like getting a Dedicated Server and then having an IT team...almost anyway. Good for corporations and high traffic sites. Also GameHosting is a little different, if some people want, I'll make one for that too. I tried to be very detailed and cut some things out so it wouldn't be longer. Quote Hey , still one thing i?ve been wondering, what would a difference make between a Linux/Unix or Windows webhosting etc for someone who would just for example want to set up a portfolio website or community? Well there isn't really a huge difference for simple stuff like that. Usually the host has all the things (PHP, ASP, CGI, whatever) installed on both so that you can do that. MySQL is usually used on both windows and linux machines now. For shared hosting its mostly just preference, not that you can tell much of a difference between them from the webhosting user level. Quote QUOTE (dotRoot @ Jul 11 2004, 22:56) I didn't actually miss it, I wanted to keep it short as possible for people, but if you or anyone else would like I'll go into all of the bigger cp's such as DirectAdmin, cPanel, Exim, H-sphere, Colbalt, and Plesk. Yes, please... great guide, thank you very much... Control Panels from a User Perspective> One thing about having a website is that you don't want to spend time having to learn the internals of apache and probably not even the shell's OS if you even get access to it. So what can you do? Use a control panel. Its pretty standard now compared to 2 years ago. So here's the roundup: cPanel - The most popular control panel out there. You can almost do anything you would want to in regards to your website. Its so massive and has so many options that it made popular limiting what you can do with it and taking those limitations away by paying extra. You can try a demo out HERE. DirectAdmin - The little guy's fully features panel. Its very, very good. It contains most of what you want to do without the bloated feeling of cPanel. But that doesn't mean you can't do very much the same things in DirectAdmin that you can't in cPanel! You can play with the demo HERE. Cobalt Control Panel> - Usually only ever used on Cobalt servers as the name implies. Not very many features. Usually never offered by the majority of webhosting providers, because of this. Plesk - Has an assortment of options. Its not as much as cPanel or DirectAdmin, but not by too much. They've done things such as recode POP3 so when you log into your webmail on your site you can just type:username> instead ofusername@domain.com>. Although it still uses an insecure form of SendMail that allows someone to use your server you can still ask your provider if they have it secured. Just recently bought out by SW Soft look for v8.0 to be much more improved than the previous versions. Monster Controls> - Standard control panel geared towards new users. Very catagorized for easy searching of what feature you want. Assortment of simple auto installable scripts. Integrated Support Ticket System. Helm - If you love windows, you'll love Helm. Very easy to use and stylish. Ease of use is one of their top priorities. I can't really say much, except that you just have to at least give the DEMO a try. Control Panels from the Admin/Resellers Perspective> I felt I would add this as some neowinians seem to be interested in start or reselling their own webhosts. WHM - WebHost Management Panel actually is just a cPanel controller. You can manage cPanel users and webhosting packages via this panel. cPanel is expensive per license ($625/year or $1500/lifetime) and you probably want to buy WHM as well. Try out the demo HERE. I should also mention that almost EVERY panel for webhosting strives to be like or better than cPanel, however it should also be mentioned that cPanel Support rarely responds or even reads the cPanel Forums. Lots of skins available though. Easy installation. Many plugins. DirectAdmin - No need to buy an extra panel to admin or resell in this. You can add resellers, other admins as well as do everything an admin for webhosting needs to do. This is growing so fast that its actually considered THE threat to cPanel. Skins are also growing fast as well as plugins. Its also remarkably cheaper than cPanel ($408/year $299/Lifetime) and also for free they'll install it on your server for you! But its also a very easy install anyway. Provides a remarkable easy API. Support forums are also very friendly and the Support staff is always on it. Check out the demo HERE. Also the integrated Ticket Support System is a pretty good and simple one. The most popular plugin is probably Installatron, which makes installing (over 20 some) scripts very easy and everything from Content Management Systems to chat. Plesk - You have 3 levels here: User, Admin (Server administrator), Master (Network Administrator/SuperAdmin). Pretty standard panel. You can do what you need. Not a lot of skins and no bloat. Whatever you can't do, its because you can (at a click) login as the user to do it for them. Install is moderate, but not as easy as the first two. Not an API worth mentioning. The Support is horrible too. Monster Controls> - Pretty big. Used by a lot of the major ISPs that don't want to spend a lot such as cPanel. Also Monster tries to hide itself from being the actual maker so webhost providers can brand the panel as their own. Also even the customer's tech support needs are met through 'hostingsupport.com' which is generic. Anyone can use it for Monster. Means you also don't have to deal with so much tech support with clients. Also includes the use of TicketMonster I believe. Play with the demo HERE. H-Sphere - Sort of the all inclusive hosting solution. Includes billing tracking and well pretty much tracking anything you can think of. Decent for the user too. Primarily aimed for the large webhosting providers, but cheap. Try out the demo HERE. Helm - Helm is becomming a very large control panel provider. They work by taking every aspect of every type of user (ex. admin, reseller, and customer) and building the panel that way. Its geared towards Windows ease of use and functionability. Also they make their own skins. Cobranding shouldn't be a problem. Very cool easy to set up Billing. This is something most panels miss. Probably the easiest way I've ever seen to be able to use all of the major Payment Gateways out there. Very easy to use. Pretty much what I call 'army proof'. See for yourself with the demo HERE. However the admin is kind of limited to certain options, but nothing major. Also I'd like to see plugin support for this in the future. Edited July 12, 2004 by dotRoot Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Storm Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 Nice Guide :) Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2461792 Share on other sites More sharing options...
futb0l Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 Good guide. There are other stuff that still can be added though such as support, etc. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2461800 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lycan Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 Hey , still one thing i?ve been wondering, what would a difference make between a Linux/Unix or Windows webhosting etc for someone who would just for example want to set up a portfolio website or community? Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2461807 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Storm Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 Lycan said: Hey , still one thing i?ve been wondering, what would a difference make between a Linux/Unix or Windows webhosting etc for someone who would just for example want to set up a portfolio website or community? Nothing just for that, if you needed mySQL based webpages you would use linux, if you used MsSQL pages, you would go with windows Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2461831 Share on other sites More sharing options...
blueshirt Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 Nice guide. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2461852 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin-uk Veteran Posted July 11, 2004 Veteran Share Posted July 11, 2004 nice guide another good tip is to check out there forums for feedback (if they have forums) also search around the net for opinions on a particular host if a lot of people recommend it (the host) is usually good :) Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2461884 Share on other sites More sharing options...
dotRoot Posted July 11, 2004 Author Share Posted July 11, 2004 Thanks everybody. And good idea Colin-uk, I usually check the feedback threads and support threads to see how things have been handled. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2463144 Share on other sites More sharing options...
sesh Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 great guide. i like the tips about whois and tracerting them. will definatly use those and some of the other things you said when i sign up for some paid hosting later this year. your kinda lucky there's no bandwidth/transfer people here (yet!), if you posted this over at freewebspace.net or something they would be all over you about that. anyway. again - great guide. sesh. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2466629 Share on other sites More sharing options...
oik Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 you missed some things, like control panels... Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2466674 Share on other sites More sharing options...
dotRoot Posted July 12, 2004 Author Share Posted July 12, 2004 oik said: you missed some things, like control panels... I didn't actually miss it, I wanted to keep it short as possible for people, but if you or anyone else would like I'll go into all of the bigger cp's such as DirectAdmin, cPanel, Exim, H-sphere, Colbalt, and Plesk. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2466767 Share on other sites More sharing options...
zephiK Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 nice guide. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2466862 Share on other sites More sharing options...
caerma Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 dotRoot said: I didn't actually miss it, I wanted to keep it short as possible for people, but if you or anyone else would like I'll go into all of the bigger cp's such as DirectAdmin, cPanel, Exim, H-sphere, Colbalt, and Plesk. Yes, please... great guide, thank you very much... :D Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2466964 Share on other sites More sharing options...
oik Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 dotRoot said: ... cp's such as DirectAdmin, cPanel, Exim, H-sphere, Colbalt, and Plesk. (don't forget helm :p) Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2467131 Share on other sites More sharing options...
dotRoot Posted July 12, 2004 Author Share Posted July 12, 2004 (edited) Review done! a mod can delete this post. I sorta accidently did the review in this post originally...guess I clicked wrong somewhere :blush: Edited July 12, 2004 by dotRoot Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2467380 Share on other sites More sharing options...
bennett Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 Nice guide :) Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2467526 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerry Grey Member Posted July 12, 2004 Member Share Posted July 12, 2004 Nice! Good Job!! :D Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2467730 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luxx Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 i am thinking of buying some space and that as helped me so thanks mate Very nice guide Top STUFF !!!! (Y) (Y) Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2468012 Share on other sites More sharing options...
QuarterSwede Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 (edited) Thanks, I didn't know about Who Is. Very handy indeed. Oh by the way, Escimo, you can get some cheap space at Glob@t.com (of course the site is down as I post this. Way to go Globat, nice time to hickup) 2,000GB/month 60GB Bandwidth/month Unlimited (I think) email accounts etc. $7.95/month ... or just use timdorr's site A Small Orange, but of course, you've seen plenty of his ads around the site I'm sure. Edited July 12, 2004 by Jstphish Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2468129 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bushrat Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 By the way, if someone would like webhosting without ads and with cpanel and excellent support send me a pm. I have a discount just for neowin members :) Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/188599-webhosting-guide/#findComment-2468601 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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