Should You Sign a Yearly Contract with a Hosting Company?

Different web hosting service providers offer different kinds of plans to host your site. The plan may involve a payment schedule on weekly, monthly, biannually, or annually basis. Generally, the total value of an yearly payment in advance costs you less than monthly or weekly payment, and there lies the trap. To save a few bucks, you end up signing a year long agreement without realizing the consequences.

You should be extremely careful while signing an yearly contract with your host. Analyze all the options. Sometimes, a host requires a yearly agreement so that its one year’s earning is secure. By and large, a yearly contract is a good option if your web host is genuine.

One of the major factors that decide whether or not you should sign a yearly contract is the type of your site. If your site requires frequent updates in content as well in graphics, a yearly contract is a good option. Your site is safely hosted at a server and you can plan updates without bothering about new hosts and their plans. It gives you a sense of security.

Another major point that you need to consider is whether or not the contract has any canceling clause. If any of the promises that your host made to you comes to be false, for example – the connection speed is slower than what was promised, or downtime is more frequent than what was discussed, a cancellation clause gives you an option to terminate the agreement and start looking for another host.

However, in the absence of a cancellation clause, you are bound to lose out on your business in case the promised services or features are not available to your site. One more option is that the contract enables you to cancel the contract if you pay certain amount to the host. The host may not mind it and the two parties can negotiate on a reasonable amount. If such an option is not a part of the contract, you can only wait for the contract to expire.

While signing the contract, seek a lawyer’s (who knows the internet and cyber laws) help. Such a person can help you correctly carve out a contract.

Risks involved in Virtual Hosting

The most tempting advantage of a virtual server over other hosting options is its price. Virtual hosting is an economical option where a single host divides a single server into multiple virtual servers. Your site is hosted on a single independent virtual server, without interfering in the working of other sites.

The price of hosting a site on virtual server is low because multiple sites use same set of hardware and software resources. The price varies from one host to another depending on the quality of service it provides, hardware and software technology, bandwidth, technical support, disk space, and connection speed.

All these factors make Virtual Hosting an excellent option. However, you should be aware of some of the risks involved in Virtual Hosting. These risks are discussed as below.

•    In Virtual hosting, you share an IP address with many sites. The other sites may or may not be genuine as they may contain some derogatory or illegal content. If a spam site is also hosted on same server, a search engine can ban the entire IP address from its index, thus stopping access to your site as well. You should keep a track of what kind of sites are hosted on your server. Ask your host for the list of sites hosted on the server, and try if the host can offer you different IP address. If it happens, make sure to resolve the domain name with new IP address before setting up the site live in to the server.

•    The basic purpose of a server is to receive requests from its clients and to respond to those requests. Usually, the requests are processed in the same order as the server was approached.

•    You should know the number of sites hosted on each server and the amount of traffic those sites get. Study the purpose of those sites as it affects traffic rate at your site. For example – the response time may be slower if you share space with 100 busy sites than if you share a server with 250 sites that only get a few hits per day.

These are some of the risks involved in virtual web hosting. Despite all these risks, millions of sites are hosted on virtual servers, and they don’t face any major problems. The only point that you need to take care is to evaluate the host carefully before you sign up for an account.

What Overselling in Web Hosting Means

In the web-hosting world, overselling has become a big trend. It is an easy way to get more out of your servers than normally possible. Overselling just means that a majority of your clients are going to use a fraction of the resources allocated to them, which means that there is going to be a lot of wasted bandwidth and space. Overselling is all about gambling and selling more than you can handle by assuming that the unused resources will cover it.

If a server hard drive is 80GB and it has 1200GB of bandwidth, the web hosting company has to look around and thus decide that in order to be competitive they will need to offer plans with 2GB of disk space and 40GB bandwidth. These figures will only allow them to offer 30 hosting packages per server. This would mean leaving wasted disk space. After a few months the web hosting company will probably notice that their users are not using all of the available bandwidth. The company will then assume that it can safely sell at least 10 more packages on the server. If the original number of customers already covers the general costs, the extra packages provided by overselling will be pure profit.

Overselling comes with some advantages. The host, for example, ends up making more money off each server than they normally would. The client enjoys the advantage having the extra revenue transferred on (at least in theory) by cheaper hosting packages with more features. Only a few users would be able to use their entire allotment without any trouble, however if every client were to build their website up to maximum capacity, the host wouldn’t e able to handle the sudden increase in demand without adding extra hard drives, buying more bandwidth or acquiring another server. This would most likely increase downtime.

Since overselling is likely to drive away customers, web hosting providers don’t usually advertise the fact that they oversell. The idea of overselling exists simply because the majority of websites don’t use all of the space that is allocated to them. This is not an honest way of dealing with clients.

All in all, overselling will not be a problem unless a web host gets too greedy and ends up selling much more than they could possibly provide for. Overselling is not even necessary, since the web host can usually make enough money to make ends meet without overselling.  Finding out whether or not a web host oversells, will be almost impossible, unless the host specifically advertises it or if they have a reputation for having problems due to excessive overselling. All you can do is just choose a reliable web hosting provider, not necessarily one that appears to offer ridiculous amounts of bandwidth or disk space for a small amount of money.

Security in Shared Hosting Environments

Security is one of the prime factors that has become a source of concern in web hosting business. Security breach means an unauthorized person can access the hosting server and can steal confidential information for malicious use. Apart from hackers, other concerns in security are viruses and threats that can destroy the systems. The host should take adequate steps to ensure security for its servers and hence for the personal data of its customers.

 

Security is a major concern particularly in case of shared and virtual hosting. Since multiple sites are hosted at single server, physically or virtually, security means that other sites are not interfering or breaching into the functioning of your site. Some of the factors that ensure security by different means are discussed as below.

 

·                    Cage structure is an important feature which enables you to gain complete privacy from other sites. In UNIX environment, a change root restriction makes the hosting service look like a restricted UNIX shell machine. This effectively creates a ‘cage’ on the hosting machine and no one can interfere with the core operations of the host machines or other services.

 

·                    You should ensure with your hosting service that no unproven binary code is permitted in the hosting environment.

 

·                    Your host should ensure that its operating system and hosting automation software and other software programs are configured to ensure that all known or reported exploits or loopholes in code are eliminated.

 

·                    You should make sure that your host has a regular audit on security. It includes verifying physical security of resources, verifying network security on the network and on server, and any unauthorized access to data.

 

·                    Your web hosting service provider should ensure that firewalls are able to prevent hacking of unauthorized access from internet.

 

·                    Your host should guide you on strong and weak passwords.

 

·                    Your web hosting service provider should ensure that antivirus software are updated daily and all kinds of technical issues are properly documented for future reference.

Is Your Web Hosting Company Unethical?

Ethics cannot be imposed on a person or a company, and you cannot sign an agreement on ethics. These are specific to an individual and are really important to run a company honestly. While doing your research for a good web host, try to ensure the ethical standards of your host. It is not easy to figure it out straightaway, but there are some signs that can help you know about your host company’s ethics.

• If your host doesn’t have any copyright statement or privacy policy on its website, it raises a big question. You provide all your personal data including your website to a host which doesn’t list what it will do and it won’t do. It is difficult to develop trust in such a situation.

• If you do not sign a written agreement with your company, how can you ensure about the validity of terms and conditions that you discussed with your host. A written agreement is an important document where all the terms and conditions of hosting are specified, for example – hosting plan and payment schedule, agreed bandwidth, disk space, connection and download speed, frequency of site updates and extra charges if any, for all or any of these services.

• Any breach of this agreement coupled with non-cooperation from the host entitles you to approach local consumer court. If you feel that some of the promises that were made are not being fulfilled, you should be able to get out of the deal. A relevant clause in written agreement gives you the platform to cancel the hosting contract.

• It is a serious issue if you do not find the contact information of your host on its website. Verify all the claims of the host in detail and do a market survey about the credibility of the web hosting company.

• If you feel that the technical staff of your hosting company is not responding to your queries, you should have the right to complain, and ask for any compensation, if required.

• If you notice a long list of customers complaining about the host, it smacks of something fishy about the company. More than one angry customer means something is wrong with the commitments and ethics of your host.

Web Hosting and Vulnerability of Email Accounts

For every web hosting plan, you get one email account by default. However, your email is vulnerable to malicious access, to viruses, and to similar other security threats. Some of the ways as to how your email accounts are vulnerable are discussed as below.

Phishing
Phish is an Internet scam designed to trick the recipient into revealing personal
information, for example – credit card, passwords, social security numbers, and other personal information. The person who gains access through Phishing intends to use the information for fraudulent purposes.

The emails often instruct the recipient to verify or update account information by requesting a reply to his email with updated information, or by providing the recipient with a link to a website where the new information may be entered. If you receive such an email, you should not respond to it, nor click on any links provided. Rather, you should contact the company who allegedly sent the notice, and inform them of the nasty scam.

Viruses
Another way a person with malafide intentions can use your email is by infecting your system with virus. These viruses are sent to you via attachments and when you open an infected file and download it to your system, the system gets infected.

You should request your host for appropriate firewalls for ensuring security. Your host can employ a system which scans all the attachments in your inbox, and deal with the virus if any.

Spam
Spam is as common as anything in email terminology. A spam is an unsolicited e-mail, mostly of a commercial nature, which is sent to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups. Almost all the web hosts assure you of spam filters, but only some of those are able to successfully filter spam.

Advantages of cPanel Hosting

Cpanel is a Hosting Automation Software used by a web host. Though, there are many automation software (such as H-Sphere, cPanel, Plesk, Sphera, Vdeck, and Ensim,) available in the market, cPanel has its own advantages.

After you have designed the site, the next step is maintaining a site, which includes setting up databases, additional email addresses, FTP accounts, or checking web statistics. If you have some experience in working on servers or network, cPanel enables you to perform these ‘technical’ tasks in a user-friendly manner.

Apart from site maintenance tasks, many web hosts that offer cPanel includes Fantastico, which is a cPanel feature that enables you to install a variety of programs and scripts with just a few clicks. Some of these additional programs include WordPress (for blogging) or Simple Machines Forum or phpBB (for hosting an online forum).

Practically, cPanel is available at a reasonable price, particularly for Linux web hosts. It enables you an access to some basic features, as listed below:
•    You can update your password and personal information.
•    You can know if the bandwidth or disk space is approaching the agreed upon limit.
•    You can add, delete, or update additional email accounts.
•    You can view the traffic on your site and know if it is nearing the permissible limit.
•    You can take complete backup of your site direct from the server.
•    You can configure http redirects, customize spam filters, and add a shopping cart, if your disk space allows you to do so.

The list of features goes on and on. The increasing popularity of cPanel over other control panels means that it is a reliable, secure, and trusted component. It gives you almost full control over your website by using an easy to use interface. In Linux environment, you don’t need to go through hundreds of commands to configure site settings. All the common features are available just at a few clicks of a mouse.

By selecting a web host offering CPanel, you can focus your energies on your business to get more traffic to your site rather than worrying about the technical aspects of site maintenance.

Multiple Domain Name Penalties

There are many websites that have multiple domain names registered. If you have registered many domain names for your site, you may not be using search engine rankings to your advantage. This is because quite unintentionally, you might be breaching search engine guidelines.

Many site owners register for more than one domain for the right reasons. The main URL includes a keyword phrase, but is too long to type quickly, so a shorter, cryptic one is used. The same shorter name is used in company’s business cards, brochures, and proposal documents.

You can register different domains as versions of a single domain, so that all the required domain names are registered with you. Moreover, you can register it with different country names, for example – www.example.co.uk and www.example.co.au. Ensure to register your domain only in those countries where you plan to expand your business or
where you see potential clients.

However, there are a few misguided reasons for multiple domain name registration, including – having multiple domains pointing to the same location thinking that the search engines will index ALL of them as different content. You believe that such a step can list your site in top rankings under different domains.

Search engines strictly dislike duplicated content but all of them are not capable of figuring out the content repetition manipulation. So, if you try being smart, you can be penalized and can be banned from SE indices. Search engines do not believe in having too many guidelines; however, if you find a statement, you got to take it seriously. For example, read a ‘Google’ guideline, as below.

In case of Google, their Webmaster Guidelines are unambiguous! E.g. on this page; http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 Google are quite clear on this: Quality Guidelines – Specific Guidelines – Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects – Don’t create multiple pages, sub-domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

It points to the risk in having multiple sites pointing to the same location if they load exactly the SAME content. Note that mere confession that you were not aware of SE guidelines is not taken as an excuse.