Archive for the ‘Dedicated Servers’ Category

Web Hosting Company For Your Small Business

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

megastarmedia

megastarmedia

When you are ready to expand your business to the Internet or start up your own Internet based business one of the first things you will need to do is find a good web hosting company. These days’ web hosting companies provide everything you and your company needs to get off of the ground. Many web hosting companies offer domain registration services, web design help, and search engine promotion and optimization. With so many competing companies offering these useful services it is hard for a small business to choose a good hosting plan.

When the time comes to start looking into small business web hosting always compare prices. While it is true that you get what you pay for in the competitive world of web hosting companies are always having discounts and special promotions in order to boost sales. Find out how much companies charge you monthly and also check to see if the web hosting companies will offer discounts for paying a year or two in advance.

Paying in advance is a good way to get extremely low web hosting and if you are hesitant about spending too much money upfront for a service you may or may not like look for a company that offers a money back guarantee. Major web hosting companies will give a thirty day or more money back guarantee that will give you a chance to test out their services. If you are still unsure sign up for a month to month billing account and upgrade to a yearly paid account at a later date. When you move fast enough you will still be able to save a good deal of money.

After you have found a few reasonably priced plans find out what features are included in the plan. In some instances a company might charge more because they offer much more than their cheaper competitors. Find out if the small business hosting plan includes one or more free domain name registrations. Also, find out what amount of bandwidth is included in your hosting plan and if any free email address are included. Being able to assign an unlimited number of email address accounts will be extremely useful for your business if you have many employees and want to use uniform, corporate, email addresses.

Last, but not least, find out how much storage space is included in your web hosting plan. A large amount of storage space will be necessary for hosting large files if you do a lot of file sharing with customers or for email accounts that have a lot of activity. If you are not sure which company will suit your business needs always consult your web design company. Most professional web design companies have worked with many major hosting companies and will be able to recommend the one that will be best for your small business needs.

Benefits of Dedicated Game Servers

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

If you are a person or business that is running a website aimed at gamers or that hosts Role-playing or other online games then upgrading to a dedicated server is something that you should consider. With the ever growing popularity of online gaming many game forums, blogs, and chat sites find themselves receiving a large amount of steady traffic each and every month. When using a shared hosting plan this overload of visitors could lead to slow loading time, busy server errors, and in some situations a temporary shut down of your website until you pay for additional bandwidth. Rather than deal with any of these inconveniences consider investing in a dedicated gamer server.

Some people are unwilling to look into dedicated game servers because of the cost traditionally associated with them. In the past years dedicated servers have required buyers to pay expensive equipment and maintenance fees. Plus a dedicated server should always be watched to avoid outages and other problems that can come from a large amount of steady visitors. Even if you are able to afford and monitor a dedicated server owners of these servers have also needed to have extensive knowledge to fix problems with the servers. Now there is an alternative.

Many shared hosting companies will offer clients a chance to rent their own, dedicated, server. These companies will still charge a monthly fee that is a bit higher than standard hosting but this fee will cover the cost of equipment and they will be the ones to monitor and fix any problem you might have. Most companies that offer dedicated servers and hosting of any kind will recommend the services to any client that hosts a high traffic website. If your current host does not actively advertise dedicated hosting then consider contacting them privately with your needs and budgets. They might be able to point you in the right direction. In the event that your hosting company does not offer any type of dedicated game servers then contact your website designer. Professional website designers will often have a list of hosting companies that they have worked with in the past and are glad to recommend good companies to existing or past clients.

If you are starting a gaming site for the first time and have no experience with hosting companies or design companies contact the owners and of some of your favorite existing sites. In many cases the owners of the site or the site designer will be happy to make recommendations and help you get started.

How to Benefit From a Dedicated Server

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Dedicated servers are something that many website owners here discussed often in chat rooms and on website support forums. While many new website owners will sign up for a shared hosting plan business owners that are affordable and maintained by a web hosting company other owners have invested in dedicated servers. A dedicated server is a server that is used by only one company for their website or websites. In the past owning a dedicated server was extremely expensive and required a lot of maintenance and technology knowledge.

These days having a dedicated server is much easier and a bit more affordable than it was a few years ago. Web hosting companies that previously offered only shared servers have now made dedicated servers available to their customers. This allows users to sign up for a hosting account the same way that they always have only now they will not be sharing a server with other account holders. The price for this service is more expensive than a shared hosting plan but still much more affordable than purchasing and managing private equipment. In addition to being more affordable investing in a dedicated server that is maintained by a third party is much more convenient. Neither you nor your staff has to worry about constantly monitoring your new server for downtime or errors. The web hosting company will perform the exact same support and troubleshooting services as they always have.

There are many benefits to having a dedicated server but the primary benefit in most website owners’ eyes is that they no longer have to fear downtime being caused by another website owner’s site. Many website owners do not realize that when sharing a server their site is in the hands of many other website owners who may not be very knowledgeable or responsible. Poorly designed sites with bad coding and other problems have led to entire servers crashing. Even if a sites coding does not disrupt the server, the sites traffic can sometimes lead to problems.

Many shared hosting plans limit the bandwidth being used by each account that is using the server in question. The web hosting company will either charge heavy fees for overuse or temporarily limit access to a site if it has exceeded a certain bandwidth amount. Unfortunately there are always times when a web hosting company does not notice an overage until it has already caused a server failure. This sometimes happens when a website uploads new content or starts a new traffic campaign that leads to a sudden burst of traffic. When a server is down your company will be penalized as traffic and potential customers are lost when they reach a site that is not active.

To avoid downtime and errors that are caused by shared hosting it is best to invest in a dedicated server. Dedicated servers are perfect for website owners that simply cannot afford to be down often and for website owners that expect a lot of traffic daily. Having a dedicated server will not only cut down on downtime, it will also make your website load faster and work more efficiently for your visitors.

What Are Dedicated Game Servers?

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Have you heard your gamer friends discussing dedicated game servers? Most serious games have considered investing in game servers at point or another. Dedicated game servers are servers like traditional web hosting servers that are used only for gaming. Dedicated game servers can be set up to play one particular game or several different games. Unlike playing a game on a PC or gaming console where you need to log into the game and make sure that the game continually downloads upgrades and other information from the main server a game that is runs on dedicated game servers is always on and is always fully updated and ready to play.

So needs to have dedicated game servers? Usually casual game players don’t bother with the expense and the hassle of having dedicated game servers. Dedicated game servers are most often used by professional gamers or other high level gamers that play on a near constant basis and need to be able to play with no interruptions from a slow internet connection or a clogged server.

A dedicated game server needs to be entirely managed by the person using it, meaning all the data that is normally programmed in by the web hosting servers needs to be programmed and maintained by the user. So keeping a dedicated game server running is not something that a casual gamer would have the knowledge to do very easily. Having specialized game servers can be very expensive also. Most of the time just one dedicated server for gaming costs several hundred dollars. But for a serious gamer the advantages of having an entire secure server dedicated to gaming outweigh the cost and the hassles of maintenance.

Another reason that dedicated severs are popular is because they offer a lot of additional security that isn’t available using a regular server. Because of the extra security some businesses also use dedicated servers but they use dedicated servers to protect company data, client records and company or client financial information. If your company has access to a lot of sensitive client information then buying a dedicated server is probably a good idea to make sure that the financial or personal data of your clients is fully protected.

5 Tips For Choosing a Business Web Hosting Company

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Confused about how to choose a business web hosting company? It can be hard to know which hosting company to trust with your business website. After all, your website is your calling card online and it’s important that you choose a reliable, high quality web hosting company to make sure that your site runs smoothly. Here are 5 tips that can help you choose a quality hosting company for your website:

1. Don’t use free hosting services – You might be tempted to try out a free hosting service and save some money but remember the old adage “you get what you pay for”. That is definitely true when it comes to web hosting! That doesn’t mean that you need to rush out and get the most expensive hosting plant that you can find but don’t bother with the free hosting services, they will do more harm than good in the long run. Free services also often have a lot of add ons that you need to pay for like stats and website tracking info so even though the hosting is free the services that you need are not.

2. Check out how long the average help desk wait is – Somewhere on the site they will tell you how long it usually takes their help desk personnel to answer a trouble ticket submitted by a customer. The average help desk wait is 24 – 48 hours. If they say that the average wait is longer than that you should find another web hosting company.

3. See if they have live help available – These days most business web hosting companies offer live help through chat applications or instant messages during normal business hours. Live help isn’t always terribly helpful but at least you can talk with someone right away when you have a problem. If you can find a hosting company in your preferred price range that offers live help you should choose that company so that you’ll be able to get a hold of someone if you need to.

4. Check to see how many email addresses you get with your website – Any hosting company should offer you free POP3 email addresses with your website. Find out how many the company offers before you sign up and make sure that they offer more than you think you’ll need so that you can change email addresses or add and subtract email addresses as employees come and go.

5. Ask about their security protocols – This is important when you’re buying hosting services. It’s important for any business but it’s especially important if you’re going to be doing any ecommerce or asking clients or customers for personal information or financial information. Find out if the company allows you to install additional security and what security they offer as a standard part of their services.

Don’t Forget About Small Business Web Hosting For Your Website

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

When it’s time for you to set up your company website there are several components that you need to have before your website will be ready to go and will be accessible to the general public. The first thing that you need to do is purchase a domain name. You might want to purchase the domain names for all the variations of your company name as well. Often you can get good deals when you purchase more than one domain name and if you own all the variations of your business name you won’t have to worry about another company with a similar name putting up a website that might confuse your customers.

After you have your domain name you have to purchase small business web hosting for your website. Small business web hosting is usually available from the company that you use to purchase a domain name but you should look around and compare the prices of small business web hosting at several companies before picking one. Often you can get small business web hosting more cheaply from another company.

There are other factors that you need to consider when picking small business web hosting beside price though. You also need to look at other things like the amount of bandwith and storage space that comes with the small business web hosting. Many companies will offer different plans that have different amounts of bandwidth and storage space for different monthly fees. If you don’t know how much storage space and bandwidth you will need you should ask your web site design company what they would recommend that you get. They can tell you what you need in terms of storage space and bandwidth.

If you have a website that will be taking up lots of storage space and needs a lot of bandwidth or if you are going to be having more than one website you might want to consider not getting a small business web hosting plan and buying your own server instead. But getting your own server is not something that many small businesses need to invest in, especially if you are just putting up a website for the first time.

Mastering Dedicated Servers – How to Use Them

Monday, July 28th, 2008

Having a server is the lifeline for your computer system. However, if it’s not working properly, or it’s working slower than usual, you may want to look at getting a dedicated server.

Using dedicated servers refers to the special usage of a computer. This computer contains software, a web server and an internet connection. These items come from your web host. If you are experiencing a lot of traffic on your sites, you may have to get a dedicated server to handle it.

It can be set up through the hosting company and has proven to be very efficient for the purpose of constant, heavy traffic. Having all of this in one central location is a good idea. The setup for web hosting companies has proven to be cost effective.

People that use dedicated servers from a hosting company usually rent them out. With that, comes the usage of a special system they can use. They can also get a computer server and connect it to the web host’s area. When renting, there is a certain amount of memory available to use. There is also bandwidth and hard disk space that comes with the package.

If you are renting from a web host, you will also get a domain name, e-mail accounts and an FTP set up. FTP stands for file transfer protocol. This is what is used when you want to upload websites and webpages. The system is an easy to control method for uploading files.

When you use this upgraded system, you will find several advantages. One is that your hosting system will be in one place. In addition to that, your hardware and operating system will be housed there also.

With this system, you are required to have regular administrative maintenance. This includes system upgrades, updates and security issues. Additional features you may need include restoration of the operating system. When this is installed, it would work automatically should the system go down.

With this type of system you will find that it operates using free systems, such as Linux. Using something like Windows requires a fee for the license. This system will help you a lot if you are one of those that get massive traffic. Or when the time comes, don’t wait until the last minute to get it installed. The last thing you want is for your internet business to fail.

How to Select the Right Web Hosting Company For Your Small Business

Monday, July 28th, 2008

In order for your online business to thrive, you have to have a website that works properly. It has to be functioning for your visitors so that the navigation is smooth. In order for that to happen, you need a reliable web hosting company. These are the people that keep your website uploaded properly and provide you with the bandwidth you need to keep visitors coming.

Of course, you have to have the right domain name and good content, but what good is that if you don’t have a reliable hosting system? Do you know how to select one that will suit your needs? It’s imperative that small business owners have a company that can take care of them.
These companies can help you to grow or help you to fail.

Let’s look at some aspects that you should look for in a web hosting company:

If you’re looking for reliability, you will have to come out of your pocket to pay for that. With this type of support, you will need to set your budget where you can pay a monthly fee for the service.

Most if not all companies offer monthly subscriptions for this. Sometimes you can get it free with a package. That too, can work to your advantage, provided it fits your budget. What you don’t want is a totally free hosting package. With this there is a catch.

The company will usually require you to display their ads on your website in exchange for free service. If you’re starting out, this is the last thing you’ll need, or want, for that matter. It just goes to show that the free route is not always the best way when it comes to having an online business.

The companies should also have a section where you can create websites with ease. It’s also important for small business owners to go with a platform that they can work with. There are two to choose from, Unix and Windows.

Whichever one is chosen should choose a package that has the servers on that particular platform. Owners of small businesses will have to shell out some money for the Windows package.

They require a payment for a licensing fee. If Unix is the chosen one, then it’s not necessary. This software is free to use and an open-source type. Choosing Unix can be cost effective, especially if you’re just starting out.

Reliability is the key to having the right host for your website. If you’re paying a cheap rate and the service is not up to snuff, then the savings defeats the purpose. It will end up costing you more in money and time. When choosing a hosting company make sure they have a guarantee in the event it doesn’t work out for you.

What You Need to Know About Linux Dedicated Servers

Monday, July 28th, 2008

Linux dedicated servers can be set to your specific needs. With the open source arena, it can be changed into a good working server. It is also used for Red Hat Enterprise and Free BSD.

A lot of web hosting companies use this particular server because of its efficiency. It helps web hosting companies to run their servers smoothly. The software used is capable of providing support to cPanel and Plesk.

It’s important for computer systems to have a system engineer. Otherwise, dealing with the system becomes cumbersome and time consuming. With the dedicated servers, companies are able to do upgrades, security issues, applications, and monitor their system.

Linux is one of the most powerful sources of free software used all over the world today. Their system is so reliable that companies in Corporate America use it for their computer systems. It is also used in computer hardware as an operating system. This would include computers such as desktops, supercomputers, video game system, e-book readers and cell phones.

Since its inception, it has been known as an operating system for servers. Nowadays, it still functions in that capacity and has become bigger and better for computers. Over half of the web hosting companies now use this system on their web servers.

It has proven to be a stable force for computer systems. This eliminates the need for desktop software with graphics that was used for servers.

It is also responsible for operating supercomputers. At least 85% of the to-notch systems use Linux to run their operating system. In addition to that, the software is used for desktops. The system has a wide array of ports that are used.

It is also known for running on lots of computer architectures. In fact, they have more out there than any other operating system. This includes watches and cell phones. Those architectures that are less diverse have to rely of special distributions.

There is a GNU General Public License to which the Linux kernel is registered and licensed under. If others looking to give out the kernel, they are required to provide the person the source code. This includes any revisions that have been made.

With the servers and software, it has proven to be a powerful force in the technology sector.

What You Need to Know About Using Dedicated Game Servers

Monday, July 28th, 2008

When using a game server, it is usually operated by a local dedicated server. They are used for league games or public communities. Anytime you play a video game online, a server connection is necessary.

How do you know whether or not you need a dedicated server? Let’s use a scenario. You’re playing a game online. It gets so intense that you can’t stop. Suddenly, you notice there is something wrong.

You’re not able to play the game anymore. You’ve used all of the juice needed for the game to function. Of course, if you’re using the server in “listen” mode, then yes, you will have that problem. You end up not having enough power to support yourself and other players that are playing games online.

That’s where a dedicated game server comes in. They are operated on dedicated hardware. These items are housed in a data center and give off additional bandwidth and more processing energy.

When people are playing games online, these types of servers are the preferred ones to use. This is because they can hold up better when someone is playing games online. When you have more than one game online, the servers can help to control and update the content. They can also withstand several activated players at once.

The servers are leased out on a monthly basis. The companies that lease them out are called game server providers. The monthly fee is usually split among those that are playing the game. The providers help the players by offering web based tools for control and configuration purposes in relation to the online games.

With dedicated game servers, the computer doesn’t create special graphics. All of the energy from processing is focused on all of the players and who hit who. That information has to be delivered to the clients immediately.

This is the fastest way for online games to work with these kinds of servers. Using them is the only way to get the job done. There will no longer be a lapse to play games because the server did not have enough juice to power the online games.