Virtual Web Servers - The Perfect Alternative to Shared Hosting

If you're like most webmasters out there, you've probably started off with shared hosting at one point or another. Though shared hosting has some advantages, by nature the hosting is shared with plenty of other websites. In order to cut costs, shared hosting companies over pack many accounts all on one single server. This can cause plenty of problems which shared hosting is all too known for, especially slow download speeds as well as sporadic downtime.

If your website is seeing a good amount of success, many would suggest that you switch to your own dedicated server. If you've seen the prices for a dedicated server, you know that costs can run high.

There is a solution in between shared hosting and dedicated hosting which is called a virtual web server. A dedicated virtual web server will let you operate your own websites as if you actually owned the server virtually. Each virtual web server has direct control over its own resources like RAM, CPU, and others. Each and every virtual web server is completely isolated from other virtual web servers, so you won't be affected in any way by the actions of other webmasters and their domains/servers.

If you treat your website like a business, or even if it is an e-commerce site, then getting a virtual web server is probably the best route for you to take. When it comes to giving your website a home on the Internet, you'll definitely want a presence that's going to be up at all times, with top download speeds.

You also have the option of installing any application on your server that you'd like. No longer are the problems of not being able to run certain web applications on your shared server because your hosting company doesn't support them. If you want something, simply install it on your virtual server. A single virtual web server will give you the flexible solution that you need for web hosting.

Published by Doug Smith. Find more information on virtual web servers or find out more about getting your own virtual private server

How Good Free Web Hosting Servers Really Are?

There are a number of websites offering free web hosting. Tripod.com or geocities.com being the most popular among them. So, the question is : Are free servers really good?

Well, the answer is simple. You don?t get anything free in life and same goes for the net.

To be frank, some of the websites host you on really fast high-end servers even with your free account, but there are many drawbacks still.

To start with, nearly every free server puts up this huge banner right on top of every page in return for their free service. This is totally annoying and not desired at any cost.

To further increase their unusability they come with very limited bandwidth or monthly transfers. So, even if you get a healthy 20 MB for free, you are limited to a very narrow monthly transfer limit of around 50-100 MB a month. Huh ? What does that mean? It simply means and if you are serious about making money on the internet, a lot of people are going to visit your website. This in turn burdens your web server and a free web server, well, it will just collapse!

Thirdly, you get an ugly looking URL which no one save the program that generated can remember eg. www.freeserverxyz.com/abc/~uv/

And that by no means is acceptable. Some of the companies have gotten round this and provide you with a cleaner whateveryouchoose.freeserverxyz.com. This is at least better than the previous mammoth.

Fourthly, nobody trusts a website hosted on a free server. Would you for instance make a $50 purchase from a URL like www.freeserverxyz.com/abc/~uv/ ? I certainly think not. To come around this problem, some free servers allow you to host your privately registered domain name for free. There is a catch here too. For this you will either have to transfer your current domain to them or register a new domain, either ways, you are at their mercy for domain pricing and still stuck with a banner on top of your page with limited monthly transfers.

However, if you still tight on budget and at any rate cannot afford a paid hosting, then I sincerely recommend one free server to you. Netfirms (www.netfirms.com) is one of the most renowned free web hosting providers with the provision of hosting your own www.yourchoice.com.

You could check out http://www.0host.com though not a kind you would expect; it does have a pretty much exhaustive list of free web hosts.

Gautamm Mehra is a young entrepreneur and IT consultant. He was introduced to computers in 1989 and has since than had a passion for everything digital. You can write to him at gautam [dot] mail [at] gmail [dot] com

Update Your Entire Website Instantly Using Server Side Includes

Imagine my plight... I have 100+ pages on my website and I have to change my e-mail address and the copyright info on all the pages. The reason...

My mail box is over-flown with junk mails.

My only option is to edit all my web pages offline and then upload each one of them again, not to mention countless errors I make in the process.

100+ pages is still a small website. Imagine what it will be like if my website had 1000+ pages?

Sounds scary right?

If you would like to avoid the kind of mess I'm in right now, you have one option. Start using "Server Side Includes (SSI)"

In technical jargon, Server Side Includes are directives which you can place into your HTML documents to execute other programs or output such data as environment variables and file statistics.

If your only intention is to manage your website more effectively and painlessly, it is more than enough if you learn one "Directive" of SSI - the "Include" directive.

In simple terms, SSI Include is a line of code which you can use in your HTML documents to include contents from other documents. In other words, change just one file (the Include file), and your ENTIRE SITE is instantly updated!

The basic syntax of an Include directive is:

Where PATH_TO is the "VIRTUAL" path to include file on your server.

Here's how to include your copyright info and navigation links using SSI Includes...

First, you need to check with your server administrator whether your server supports SSI or not. Most servers support them.

Second, you need to rename all your HTML files with extension .shtml

-----SIDE BAR-----
You can start with one file and if everything goes fine, rename rest of the files. -----SIDE BAR-----

To keep things organized, you can create a directory at the root level called "includes" to house all of your included files. Now create a HTML document with only your copyright and navigation links. Copy everything that is between the BODY tags of this document and paste it in a new file.

Save this file as nav.html or any name you like with extension .htm or .html. You need not save this file with .shtml extension. Now upload this file to your "include" directory which you created for housing SSI Includes.

To include copyright info and navigation links in a HTML document in your SITE ROOT, place the following code where you want the copyright info to be seen:

Now if you want to include copyright info and navigation links in a HTML document in a folder UNDER your site root, the code will change to:

...and so on.

If you want to change or edit your copyright info or navigation links, just edit and upload your nav.html file and the change will be reflected in all the documents (using the "Include code") instantly!

You can also create your website headers/footers using SSI Includes.

There are host of other cool things you can do with SSI. For more info on SSI, you can visit the following sites:

http://www.useforesite.com/tut_ssi.shtml http://wdvl.com/Authoring/SSI/Intro/index.html http://www.bignosebird.com/ssi.shtml

Vishal Rao publishes an informative e-zine: iNet Profits. Subscribe to his e-zine and get his free e-mail course: "11 Killer Strategies To Explode Your Online Profits", by sending a blank e-mail to => sub@inetprofits.par32.com

The Need for Dedicated Servers & Managed Hosting

The World Wide Web has brought with it some of the most amazing technological advances ever seen by a single generation. Just ten years ago, it was considered "cutting edge" for a company to simply have it's own website, never mind an interactive page with high-tech graphics and shopping carts. But now if a business doesn't have its own site, they are considered to be archaic by the majority of net surfers. But with all of these advances come some issues, especially for those companies and businesses that require larger or heavily visited sites. For this and other reasons, dedicated servers and managed hosting has become quite popular in the more recent years of the Internet.

Simply put, a dedicated server refers to the manner in which Web hosting is done. A shared Web hosting company may have several different companies' websites on one of their "on-premises" computers, all running at the same time. But larger companies (with the websites to match), maybe with a forum or need for a lot of storage, are much better off with their own computer from a Web hosting company. This is what a dedicated server is- one computer from a Web hosting company that is "dedicated" to the needs of one website. Not only does such a server save the client network administration fees and overall costs, client router, Internet connection and security system, but also can usually be fully operated by you, the client.

Once you've decided that the best interest of your business and website includes a dedicated server, you need to decide on a Web host. The computer that holds all of your website's information (the html, graphics, etc.) is your (managed) web host, which may be either dedicated to you or not, as described above). You pay the web hosting company a fee to keep all of your site's information.

Besides the extra storage space that accompanies a dedicated server, there are many other perks that come along with the package because, of course, a dedicated server is more costly than a shared one. For example, if another website on your shared server were to experience an extremely high level of traffic, your website would suffer drastically. If you want to run your own software on your site, a typical shared server won't allow you to. And the security level on a shared server is much lower than that of a dedicated one.

When it comes to the future of your website, both a dedicated and shared server enable you to upgrade your space and service as needed, but a dedicated server doesn't have the restrictions that a shared server will have. After all, when you share a bedroom with your siblings, you're going to have significantly less closet space than when you have your own room.

John Marshall recommends that you visit http://www.memset.com/ for more information on Dedicated Servers & Managed Hosting.

Information about Xeon Dedicated Server

Xeon dedicated servers are especially designed for the customers who have less computing requirements. These are the best for the customers who want average server load. Actually Xeon is a powerful system that is designed for e-commerce, database and enterprise applications.

Some Xeon dedicated servers include single or dual 64-bit Xeon processors with SATA/SCSI drive configurations. It also offers some options to upgrade processor like increased memory, additional hard drives and RAID configurations. Additional features include 1U chassis along with 2 drive bays and 6 memory slots.

Setup fee of Xeon dedicated server starts from RM500.00. Cost of these dedicated servers totally depends on your requirements. Customers may subscribe Xeon dedicated servers for 3, 6, 9, or 12 months as per their needs. They can renew or change the subscription periods at the end of the service period. They can easily move to a superior offer.

Xeon dedicated server provide fast speed and great performance at special prices. It offers Intel Xeon 2.8 Ghz Processor, Tyan Motherboard, 1024 Megabytes RAM, 80 GB SATA Hard Drive, 1000 GB Of Transfer Inbound, 1000 GB Of Transfer Outbound, 8 IP Addresses, 10 MB/S Port, DirectAdmin Control Panel, and Latest Redhat Linux or Fedora. Whenever you buy a Xeon dedicated server, it sets up on the same day.

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