Tech Education

Problems with free hosting plans?

When you’re ready to choose a web hosting provider, many choices come up. One main choice is to go with a free web hosting provider.

A free web hosting provider will generally fit some people and their content. Want to host a blog? A free web provider can handle that with no problem. Want to have an online store? A free or even cheap hosting provider is not for you.

Free hosting plans generally come with some limit on bandwidth. Ever come across a link that comes up as: “This user has exceeded their bandwidth for the month. Please try again next month” These people are using free or cheap web hosting providers and hitting the limits. If you hit this bandwidth limit, for the rest of that month anyone going to your page will see that message. It wouldn’t matter if you posted an important update, no one could see it.

If you have a basic blog with a few updates for your family, bandwidth won’t be a problem. If you want to get past the basic web page and start setting up video clips, there’s the problem. Bandwidth on even a short video clip would equal thousands of regular text page views. One video clip to a few people can take up your entire bandwidth for the month.

Another problem encountered with free web hosting is advertising. A free web service needs money to stay alive just like you, when you don’t pay advertisers will. When you provide content to be published, they can link in to certain words to promote products, sell banner ad space on the sides, etc. They key here is that they are choosing what runs and what doesn’t. If you’re talking about the PETA movement and the abuse of animals – do you want a banner for a dog food company? The text of your article could provide keywords for things you’re speaking about, so it would be possible to get conflicting messages. What if you have something against a certain advertiser? With a free web host it wouldn’t be possible to refuse space for that advertiser, it’s free and you get what you pay for.

To decide on getting a free web host, take a look at what you want for your content. To publish an article or get a general blog going, a free provider can be a step in the direction you’d like to go. For more specific content or for a professional appearance, you’ll want to go to a reputable web hosting plan.

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You can always check out your free web hosting options at http://www.webhostingoffersdeals.com/

How do I choose between Linux web hosting and Windows web hosting?

We’re often asked this question and why it should matter to your final site.  Linux and Windows are operating systems and both have fundamental differences, but also many similarities.  The truth is it all depends on what you want.  Simple right?

Let’s start with the web site idea.  When you begin to pick a web hosting provider you’re moving past the “I want a web site” phase and starting to move into the “I want my web site to do this” phase.  Don’t try to make a decision on a back-end right away, you’ll just confuse yourself and get bogged down.

Let’s start by thinking of your web site having a back-end and a front-end.  The front-end is what your customers and clients see – this is the face of your business.  That face can be professional, whimsical, informational – anything you come up with.  The front-end is where you think about graphic design, user interface and content of the site.   This is also the part you’re designing things on the back of a napkin and not worrying about how it works – just how it looks.

The back-end is getting into the technical portion and most likely where you’ll need someone to work things through with you.  This is the portion of the web site that no one will see except you.  When you chose a form in the front-end, what do you want it to do?  Sure it can collect an email address for you to contact them – that’s a basic function.  Now choose what to do with that information – do you want to store those addresses, along with when they contacted you?  Do you want to store that information just in your email client or do you want a database?

Now you have an idea of where you’ll be when you choose Linux or Windows for your hosting solution.  Now the tools will help us focus further.  In our example your form is collecting email addresses.  If you just want your information mailed to you and you’ll call them and delete the email – it won’t matter what operating system you choose they both can handle a simple feature like email.  Do you want to store those emails  in a database with other information?  If so, do you already have a database to store those in?

Linux hosting will generally come with a MySQL database.  MySQL is a major database, able to hold millions of lines of information and is supported by major companies and numerous web support sites.  MySQL is also free to use, easy to set up (with the right help) and a web standard.  It interfaces with major publishing systems like Drupal, WordPress, PHP pages and general HTML.  If you don’t have a database for yourself it generally won’t matter what is setup – pick the cheaper one in this case.  For most companies if you don’t have a specific need – pick a Linux host, they’re generally cheaper.

Windows hosting is more specific to what tools you have to publish, maintain your site or internal tools you’re using.  If you currently have an in-house SQL database, it’s a more appropriate solution to host that database on the web using a Windows-based hosting provider.  If you have tools or programming done with Visual Studio, those tools can publish directly to your Windows-based website or directly convert into a web page hosted there.

Either choice in creating a website can be a technical challenge and it’s recommended to talk with a technical consultant.  Even an hour of time from one can help you save hours of work on your part.

More articles on choosing a Linux or Windows based web host

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