Web Hosting Reviews

Broadband Speed Test Award Winners

(PRWEB) December 28, 2007 — www.BroadbandChoices.co.uk today announces the ISP heavy hitters that delivered the most consistent broadband speeds in 2007. Download speed has been an area of much debate in the broadband market throughout 2007, with many ISPs simply not delivering the promised download performance.

A report by consumer group, Which? earlier this year found a "huge" gap between publicised broadband speeds and what most users actually received, with the average speed "enjoyed" by customers on 8Mb packages being as low as 2.7Mb.

Michael Phillips, product director at BroadbandChoices.co.uk, said: "Connections get degraded the further away they are from the BT exchange. Factors like this and poor quality wiring significantly degrade broadband connections and reduce the available speed. It's simply not possible for every customer to get the advertised speed. Our speed test show that, on average, customers only receive 35 per cent of the promised speed."

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BroadbandChoices.co.uk Reveals 2007 Broadband Speed Test Award Winners

Web Hosting For The Small Business

Any business of almost any kind needs to be on the internet today to be taken seriously. While this is just another cost of business lost in the huge budgets of major companies, for a small business it may represent a major expense and one that must be carefully allocated as economically as possible. One way to decrease website expense is the use of web hosting.

The advantages of web hosting can be substantial for the small or medium size business, but there are also some risks and disadvantages to consider. By definition, web hosting involves a third party in your business, so you want to choose very carefully. Have a less than reputable or ethical hosting company could cause you problems.

For example, one thrifty form of web hosting is the shared domain, where the provider partitions a server into sections and companies have their own little piece of the server with a unique name, but really part of one domain. These tend to be the least expensive, and cost is one of the primary advantages of web hosting, and as such a boon to small, cash-poor companies and new start ups.

The disadvantage is that you have no control over who is sharing that space with you. If one of the other users is a crook running a scam, or an unethical marketer spewing e-mail spam to unhappy victims, the whole domain may be blacklisted or blocked by others. You could be perfectly ethical and honest, but your site would be labeled as undesirable along with the real violators. Be very careful about rules domain providers make and how well they enforce them.

Another of the advantages of web hosting is a saving in the costs of hardware, equipment, and its maintenance. Since the hosting company has the servers and will be responsible for repair and replacement, you don’t have to bother or put out the cash. The disadvantage is that if they are slow with repairs or don’t upgrade outdated equipment your site may bog down or even go offline.

There are advantages of web hosting in reducing staff costs as well. You don’t need to hire someone to manage the equipment or trouble shoot problems when they occur. IT support personnel do not come cheap, so this can be a huge savings to the smaller company. The disadvantage is no control at all over the qualifications of the people the hosting company does hire, and uncertainty about how much of the time they will be available or how fast they will respond.

A business will need to consider whether or not the advantages of web hosting currently outweigh the disadvantages. At some point, it may be preferable and more feasible to host and maintain a site internally, but in the beginning, web hosting can mean the difference in being able to have a web presence or not, and should at least be considered.

Fantastico Installer Enhances Usability

The Fantastico installer is not very popular yet but it is installed on more than 10,000 servers around the globe. Here is a brief overview of the features of this tool. Let us see how it is different from other such tools and what are its short comings.

First of all, this software will spare you aggravation and expense by allowing you to make web hosting automatic. It does this by installing software applications on your server using scripts. This is a library of scripts, created by a third-party, which lets you plug in any software application available to the system. Ordinarily this would take hours. However, this software will allow your computer to take about a minute to install through your control panel.

Most web hosts offer this utility free of charge, but you generally have to install it prior to use. The majority of Fantastico Installer programs are from open source, at this time they number around forty (with a few commercial products also available in certain cases). These programs have a great appeal to those who like to do things on their own, and who want greater site control in their own hands even though they don’t control the server that hosts their site.

What are the programs available via the Fantastico Installer and its php scripts? They run the gamut from blog programs, content management, customer relationship software and discussion boards to e-commerce programs, guestbooks, mailing lists, and site-builders. These tools can be installed by users with little- to no- technical knowledge or expertise with web servers, making for a more robust website.

One issue that must be avoided is out of date scripts. Not all web hosts regularly update their scripts, so your program may be outdated. Sometimes security flaws are present in early releases, then fixed in later versions or releases. This can result in the presence of security flaws that remain in the older version you may be using. Additionally, even the most current versions may not be properly configured to optimize security, which can result in opportunities for hackers or spammers.

The Fantastico installer can take your basic vanilla webpage and make it look like it was designed by a professional.

Top Five Advantages of Dedicated Web Hosting

Compared to share web hosting, It is more expensive to host your web site on a dedicated server. You may wonder why to even think about using a dedicated web hosting solution. There are many advantages to having your own dedicated server. There are several web hosting providers with different web hosting plans that can provide you with the right kind of dedicated web hosting solution.

1. The first and perhaps the biggest advantage of dedicated web hosting is stability and reliability. Your server has a higher uptime if there are no other users on the same server. With others sharing the same server, you have a risk overloading the server. It is also possible that some of the webmasters of the other sites on the same server can be beginners that write code that will crash the server.
2. The second and perhaps as important benefit is customization. With a dedicated server you get to choose the server operating system and all the features of the server. If you need special server software or extensions there is no one telling you it can’t be done. You can even choose which control panel you will use to manage the server.
3. Third advantage of dedicated web hosting is security. You are the only person who has an access to the dedicated server. You can be certain that nobody is installing any malicious code or ever viruses on the server that hosts your important website. You can even have you own external firewall to make sure that you are the only person allowed to access the server.
4. Fourth advantage is that you have more options with hard drives. With a dedicated server you can opt to have two hard drives where the other hard drive will always be a mirror image of the other one. It is almost impossible for both of the mirrored hard drives to go bad at the same time. You will never loose any data because of a hard drive failure.
5. A unique IP address is the fifth important advantage. With a dedicated server you are guaranteed to have a unique IP address. A shared server has one IP address and special header-reading software determines which website traffic is directed to which actual site. This can slow down a server. Upgradeability is the sixth advantage. You are free to upgrade your dedicated server any way you like.

Is Godaddy Screwing With Uk Domains?

I have received the link from the Fantastic Lord Matt about Godaddy shady domain deals:

Lord Matt Emergency Notice: This is an emergency post made by Lord Matt on a server not quite ready to run his blog but placed here out of fear of reprisals from godaddy.com – if you have been “shafted” by godaddy over your dot uk domain names this page will show you what you can do to stop your domains being lost. I am not a solicitor so for solid advice on matters of law please talk to an expert.

BlueHost- Unlimited Domains In One Account

Bluehost has recently revamped their web hosting plan offering customers opportunity to host unlimited number of domains in one account and at the same time increasing disc storage to 300 GB and bandwidth to 3000 GB.host unlimited number of domains in one account.

Although Bluehost is not the first  provider to offer unlimited domains in one account, they were among first providers to offer multiples (6) in one account.

If you have purchased your web hosting with Bluhost more than one year ago, you may be interested to learn how to move your account to a box with PHP5 .

Hackers And Your WordPress: 2 Golden Rules To Keep Your Website Safe

Web Hosting Review Blog was hacked about 6 days ago. This website is powered by WordPress and although I’ve seen many other blogs being hacked, I never thought that it will ever happen to me. But it did. Here are two simple rules for you to follow should the security of your WordPress be ever compromised by a hacker.

1. Keep Up With Updates: WordPress and Plugins. Do not wait for update to be available through “Fantastico” upgrade your WordPress regularly!
2. Make a full backup of your websites at least every week if you are regular blogger, it is lass painful to loose a week worth of posts comparing to a year worth of posts. (Of course if you post 10+ posts per day you may consider backing up your websites even more frequently).

You can can probably find millions of tips on how to make your WordPress installation more secure, none of them will absolutely guaranty your perfect protection. The fact of the matter is that WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platform and it will continue to be the primary target of all sorts of jerks who have nothing to do with their time.

If you are looking for a web host for your WordPress take a look at what visitors had to say about Bluehost, Hostmonster and Lunarpages.