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Web Hosting Jargon – DNS Propagation

admin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:25:42 +0000

Computer technology has evolved exponentially over the years, and all of the new technology requires new terminology so that geeks have an idea what other geeks are talking about. Some hosting terms are acronyms, others are initialisms, and a few are combinations of everyday speech with a little twist. Today we’re going to look at the meaning of DNS and DNS propagation.

DNS – DNS is short for Domain Name System, which is a fancy term for the link between the website you enter into your web browser (http://www.readysetconnect.com) and the actual machine that stores the website’s files. We discussed a portion of the intermediate step in our article on Name Servers, but today we’re going to go a little deeper.

All modern technology revolves around the two digits 0 and 1 in the form of binary code. Binary code can very often be deciphered by humans in simple terms, but trying to read or write in binary is near impossible. Saying “hello” would look like: 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111. No one wants to read that, so our computers convert the digits to human-readable text. This makes our lives easier. The same process occurs when dealing with computer-to-computer communication.

All devices connected to the internet or some form of computer network are identified by a number called an IP address. For example, the IP of the computer you’re reading this article on is more than likely 127.0.0.1. But like binary, who wants to remember randomly and sometimes frequently-changing numbers just to visit a website? No one does, so the domain name system was created. DNS is the system that associates human-readable text (website addresses) with the number-based IP address of the remote computer. Instead of having to remember 209.85.171.100 when you want to visit Google, all you need to remember is Google.com. That’s much easier.

DNS Propagation – In our article on Name Servers we discussed the idea of a name server being equivalent to the listings of a telephone book. The name server is the machine that associates the name you remember and the address of the destination. DNS propagation is simply the time it takes for the new records of the name server and remote IP addresses to update on all computers. Thinking of our telephone book analogy, your friend may move to a new address, and it only takes you a minute to update your own phone book. While you may know the new address immediately, you will have to wait for the next round of phone books to ship from the phone company. This could be next week or, if the latest book just came out, as much as a year or two away. Fortunately, it only takes several hours for the changes to update for all computers on the internet, but the process is not instantaneous. Under normal conditions, it can take anywhere from 0 – 24 hours for all computers to be pointing to the same machine. So while you may be seeing that awesome new website you just posted, your friend down the street may have to wait a little while for his computer to update.

Web Hosting Jargon – Name Server

Dan — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:42:49 +0000

Ever feel like you’re talking to someone from a foreign country when all you want is a little help with your website? This series explains what some of the web hosting industry’s technical terms mean, so the next time you contact tech support you’ll feel like you’re talking to someone who lives a little closer to home. Today we’re going to look at the job of a name server.

Name Server – The internet is made up of millions of computers located all around the world. Life would be much easier if these computers all talked to each other and knew exactly what you intended when you click a link on a website or enter a web address. Due to the internet’s technical nature, this perfect world doesn’t exist, so some of the busy work is left up to you, the user.

Whenever you type in an internet address such as http://blog.readysetconnect.com, your computer has no idea what remote machine it has to connect to. There are millions out there, but where should it go? How should it get there? The solution to this problem is the real-world equivalent of a telephone book. Given a name, you can search a telephone book to find a person’s phone number, and in many cases their home address as well. The listing in the phone book and the concept of a name server are synonymous. The name server’s job is to point the user (or in this case, the computer) to the destination where the website can be found. If someone moves or changes his or her phone number, the entry in the telephone book must be updated.

So what does a name server do?

The name server acts as the link between the user’s computer and the remote destination in that it tells the computer where it needs to go. Your job, when setting up a website, is to enter the name server into the phone book. Normally this is accomplished at the domain registrar website (the place you used to register your domain). The registrar will give you the option to configure anywhere from one to four or more name servers. Usually you will enter two, however more adds redundancy. After you update the name server, it can take anywhere from 0 – 24 hours for the registry to update. Once everything is online, your computer will know where to go when accessing your website, assuming the name server is configured correctly. That’s usually something you don’t have to worry about, and your web host will be able to help you if you have any problems.

For more information on DNS propagation, check out this post.

The definition of web hosting – technical and layman definition

Dan — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:32:30 +0000

We’re going back to the basics today by defining what web hosting actually is. It’s actually quite hard to find a good definition of web hosting so I’m going to give you my technical definition. I will also give a couple good definitions that the layman can understand.

Every time someone asks me what it is that I do, I always have a hard time explaining to them what web hosting actually is. I always say something similar to:

ME: “I provide people with hard drive space on my web servers so that they can have their website online and viewable by other people.”

And almost always the persons’ response is “so you build websites or something?”

Then I will continue to go on for another couple minutes trying to find the best way to explain it to them until they eventually understand.

Help from other people to define web hosting

It was becoming apparent to me, that I was simply unable to provide a good explanation to the layman as to what web hosting really was. I guess my explanations have become tainted by years of working in the web hosting industry – too much jargon and I was assuming too much when describing to the person my job.

So I decided to get some help at www.webhostingtalk.com and I got some great definitions that are much easier to understand than mine.

“Providing websites a home to live.”
“Space for your sites on the internet.”
“A business that allows customers to operate their own website without having to have their own computer running 24/7″
“I have a computer that displays websites online. Customers pay to put their site on my computer so that their sites display online.”

It’s funny to me that there are so many ways to describe web hosting, some ways a lot more efficient than others. I think the above 4 definitions are the easiest to understand regardless of the persons background with website development/internet.

Got a better definition for web hosting?

Please share your definition with us. I am always looking for different ways to define my field of expertise that is simple for newbies to understand.

Hosting your website off your home PC. Is a personal web server a good idea?

Dan — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:54:07 +0000

I’m willing to bet that when you started your first website you got the idea, at least once, to save money by hosting your website on your home PC and internet connection. Starting a personal web server to host your website of your home computer has always been an interesting idea to me…but is it a good idea?

Be prepared to learn a lot!
If you really want to go through with starting a web server on your own you better be prepared to learn a lot and also spend a lot of time testing. In all honesty, if you know nothing about web servers I highly suggest you give up and go with a cheap but reputable web hosting service.

A headache and a half!
When I first setup a personal web server at my house it took me roughly 2 weeks to figure everything out like installing Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, configuring PHP to work with MySQL, etc. I cannot tell you how many times during those 2 weeks I was tempted to throw my server out the window and say to hell with it.

Your ISP might not be equipped to host a website from.

Even if you have the fastest DSL or cable connection you might not have enough power to host your own website. When running a web server, download speed is not important at all. The main factor to serving out fast web pages is your connections’ upload speed. The fact is that cable and DSL usually have crappy upload speed and throughput. Not only that but some ISPs even have clauses in their terms of service that customers are not allowed to host websites from their home connection.

The cost of leaving your computer on 24 hours a day.

Even though I stopped using my home server a long time ago, I still leave on my personal computer 24 hours a day. I have calculated that leaving one computer on 24 hours a day costs roughly $20/month (depending on your computer specs). So if you are used to leaving your computer running 12 hours a day, you will be pumping out an extra $10/m just to host it yourself.

Other factors may hinder you -

If you are behind a router you will find it even more difficult to setup a web server. Another thing that doesn’t come with a home web server is an experienced server administrator. You risk getting your computer hacked into if you don’t work on security.

The fact is: it’s cheaper to go with a professional web hosting service.

Let’s do some simple calculations here. Plan to spend atleast 40 hours working to get your server setup and configured properly. We take 40 hours x $7 (minimum wage) – $280. Now lets add in the extra $10/m it will cost to pay for the extra electricity being used by your computer that is now on 24/7.

So to run your own web server from home you are looking at paying $10/m + $280 for the time you spent figuring it all out.

Now lets use a plan from my web hosting company as an example:

For $6.95/m you get a web hosting plan that can provide way more than your personal computer could – 15GB disk space, 200GB bandwidth, and support for any scripting languages you could need. Not to mention your home computer won’t be able to stand up to a professionals’ hardware.

As you can see, hosting your website from a home web server is actually quite difficult to do. It takes a lot of skill and experience to configure the required services that a web server needs. Not only is it difficult to do, but it also costs more money to do it yourself. A cheap web hosting service can provide you a better service for a cheaper rate than you could do with your own setup.

LOL @ Free reseller hosting plans and free dedicated server requests

Dan — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:32:10 +0000

While most of my experience is the paid web hosting sector, lately I have been reading up on free web hosting because of the free hosting company I started – 0bones.com. Now I thought that some requests for paid hosting plans were ridiculous, but if you want a real laugh, keep an eye on the hosting request forums at freewebspace.net

Free reseller hosting plans – I feel sorry for your customers!

When I first saw a request for a free reseller plan I almost died laughing. The guy wanted a reseller plan with something like 50GB disk space and 100GB of data transfer for free. Not only that, but he wanted to be able to provide his clients with shell access(say goodbye to that server!).

How could anyone feel safe knowing that their whole reseller business relies on the whims of the free hosting service that is providing it. I’m all for people trying to make some money off of selling something they got for free, but this is just over the line. Why?

Paid reseller plans are hard enough to offer – paid reseller plans are highly resource intensive…especially when the reseller starts adding more and more accounts to his reseller plan. Now, imagine being crammed onto a server with hundreds of free reseller plans on it.

Want to hear something even funnier? The guy asking for that ridiculous free reseller plan actually got a couple offers. While there were some strings attached, the plan was free none the less. I thought to myself…no way this is viable. 2 months later I checked out the company that offered him it and sure enough I was met with the ‘This page is not found’ error (the company went out of business).

Onto the idea of a free dedicated server.

Contrary to what you might think, a free dedicated server is actually more realistic than free reseller plans. In fact, I have provided many clients with free dedicated servers in the past and our trade off was very successful. I was able to procure many new customers by sponsoring large communities with dedicated servers. That being said, if you have nothing to offer the provider giving you the free server (traffic, branding, etc.) than forget about the idea of getting it free.

I remember seeing someone request a free dedicated server awhile back to host a bunch of game servers on. Needless to say, no one offered him anything. Why? Because what does the server provider get out of it? Maybe a few extra hits of untargeted traffic worth maybe $1 a month at max.

While the idea of getting a free reseller plan is just absurd (and a bad idea), the possibility of getting a free dedicated server is much greater. You just have to be able to provide the company giving you the free server something in return. Remember the saying – ‘nothing is free in this world’. Well it especially proves true with web hosting. No one gives away resources that cost money unless they profit from it somehow.

Phone support: do you require a web host to provide toll free tech support?

Dan — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:19:48 +0000

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

I am interested in what you all think about web hosting and toll free phone tech support. I grew up in the age of information technology where email and text messaging are the ‘in’ thing. In my opinion, voice to voice communication is slowly losing its popularity due to the ease of sending an email or text message.

Do you require a web hosting provider to offer phone support?

I created this post to get a poll of what people think about the importance of providing phone support. I am still drawn 50/50 whether phone support is required these days – especially for internet based operations like a web hosting business.

I can think of some PROS from both the customer and company perspective:

Phone support is quick – Phone support provides instant communication between the client and support technician (unless you get put on hold!). No need to wait for email replies.
Easier to explain yourself – It is certainly much easier to express yourself/problem over the phone. Sometimes type can’t get the proper message across.
More personal – Phone support is more personal which makes a tech more willing to go the extra mile to help you/less willing to disappoint you. It also helps develop a personal relationship between the client and company.
Customer retention – its harder to leave a personalized website hosting service compared to a web hosting company that has no idea that you exist.

There are some CONS – but mostly for the web hosting service provider.

Increases hosting plan price – Phone support is more costly than your standard email/ticking support options. This leads to higher hosting plan prices.
No records – There is no record of what is being said on the phone. While with support tickets you can go back and look at the text to get the information you need instead of having to re-ask the person over the phone.
Ties up the support technician - The support tech must give you 100% of his/her attention while on the phone. This means he/she is unavailable to help other customers. Email/ticketing allows the support tech to knock out multiple problems at the same time.
Language barriers – It can be hard to understand the person you are talking to if they are speaking to you in a 2nd language. Also accents can make it hard to understand what is being said.
Technical Jargon – try saying a URL like this over the phone http://0bones.com/discussion.php?d=10010300000000000011

I can also see phone support being more crucial for different types of web hosting services.

For example, I would never sign up for a dedicated hosting service that does not offer phone support. There is nothing worse than sitting behind your computer waiting for a support technician to reply to your email as to why your server is down. Shared and reseller hosting services, in my opinion, are less likely to require phone technical support because most of the issues that arise are routine and can be fixed with a mouse click or two.

While there are certainly many PROS to offering phone support for your web hosting business, there are equally just as many CONS that weigh evenly.

Please help me make up my mind with your votes and comments!

Reducing your web hosting costs. How to save money on website hosting plans.

James — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:16:53 +0000

Web hosting industry today, is a powerful and lucrative option that most web business associates would love to try out. Maintaining a website has also become equally costly. With so many options offered by numerous websites in recent times, it might just be difficult to reduce costs of supporting a website even though you have chosen the best web hosting provider.

Look for Optimum Hard Drive Space

While all websites need to expand to match the growing market, too much disk space than what is required can be a bane to your profit. For instance, a particular website may only need 200 MB space but it ended up with more than 500 MB space. This space is simple redundant and not required.

In other websites, webmasters did not plan for the required space and ended up coughing up more cash due to the cost of the extra disk space.

So, the solution would be to find out the amount of space needed for your website. Then, plan some more extra space – say less than 50 percent – to get the optimum space.

Look for Optimum Bandwidth

The similar theory applies for bandwidth also. Ensure that you don’t shell out extra cost due to over usage. Stay within your limits and choose a little extra bandwidth strength to match high data transfer.

Look for Block Purchase of Bandwidth and Disk Space

Often, web hosting providers offer block purchase for disk space or bandwidth. If the amount allocated within the block, matches your needs, then go for this option. It would help you to reduce your cost.

Look for Customer-Savvy Providers

Some web hosting providers offer a good service to their clients. For instance, when a website is going in for an over usage for both disk space and bandwidth, it automatically informs the client about the extra usage. It also offers block purchasing facilities at that time to help customers reduce their spending.

Look for Multiple Domains

There are options where one account can offer multiple domains. This option is lot more cost effective than those amounts which offer single domain hosting facility. So, in case you have many websites to launch, go for a web hosting provider who offers multiple domain.

In case you have only one website to launch, team up with group of webmasters planning to launch their site and share the cost.

Look for a Free Mail Server

Don’t pay extra for a mail server as most standard web hosting providers offer this facility for free. The number of email addresses that you can get from the host should also be “unlimited”.

All in all, ensure that you have the optimum facilities, correct options, and good customer care service to maintain your website in a cost effective manner that would suit your budget.

Have some tips to save money on web hosting?

If you have some additional tips on reducing your website expenses, we would like to hear from you. Let’s see some comments!

Start your own online web hosting company – is the hosting market saturated?

admin — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:38:14 +0000

For today’s post, I’m shifting focus towards starting your own web hosting company, rather than focusing on a particular web hosting topic. Even if you don’t want to start your own hosting business, you may still find this post helpful because you will gain better insight on how the web hosting industry works.

So anyway, you have decided you want to start your web hosting company. At this point, I’m guessing you are doing the grunt research work to learn as much about the industry as possible. By now, you have realized that there are literally tens of thousands of web hosting companies out there. You may ask yourself:

How can you score clients if there is so much competition?
Is my time worth the effort?
How can I compete with these ridiculous web hosting plan offers?
Is it too late to jump into the hosting market?

These questions are probably plaguing your mind as they did mine roughly 7 years ago when I started my web hosting company. If you go to any popular web hosting forum, you will notice that these types of threads are always popular. Half of the replies are ‘no, there are already too many web hosts’ and the other half of the replies are ‘yes as long as you have a niche’. Basically what Im trying to say is that even after all this time, these questions are still being asked and still get the same answers as they did back in 2002.

Surely more and more web hosts have started since 2002, right?

While yes, there are definitely more web space providers out there today than before, there are still only a select group of web hosts that remain popular and are well known today. Also, I will say that 70% of the start up web hosts never make it past the first year. That means only a small group of companies make it over to year 2, year 3, etc.

No! The hosting market is not over saturated.

Here is what you have probably read over and over – ‘it is not saturated as long as you develop your niche’. But what in the world does that mean? It basically means: do not try and compete with the top, most popular, hosting businesses out there. They have already cornered their ‘niche’ – cheap hosting with a lot of resources.

In order to be successful in todays market, you must put in a lot of effort to distinguish your company from the rest. So how do you do that? This is where you need to be creative. I can’t sit here and simply list the step by step procedure to making a unique hosting service.

I can only offer you examples.

Example 1: SquareSpace.com
Right off the bat, SS does not look like your typical hosting provider. While they are still just a web host at the core, they have spent a lot of time developing their own little web hosting environment.

Example 2: 0bones.com
0bones is a free web host with a spin on it. They have intertwined a social network into their service so that members can promote their website all over the 0bones social network. This service is still a free web host at the core, yet it offers something different than the rest – a way to get free traffic to your website and also making interacting with other 0bones members easy.

So in a way, you could say your niche is what you offer that is different than the other hosting services out there. You must be creative!

In todays 2009 hosting market, which is still relatively the same as it was in 2002, you must offer a unique service in order to succeed. It is also a good idea to get trying to compete with top web hosts like HostGator, LunarPages, 1&1, etc. out of your mind. These low cost, high resource web hosting markets have been cornered and, while not impossible to tap into, you will have a much harder time getting your company well known in for this niche.

Got a good idea for a web hosting business?

Think you have a good idea for a hosting company? Post a comment with a summary of it here and I will try and see if I can find a web hosting service that is similar to what your idea is.

Connecting your domain name to your web hosting plan. DNS forwarding vs name servers

Dan — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:35:38 +0000

I am going to cover a very basic topic today – How to connect your domain name to your new web hosting service. Even though this is a very easy to do, I still find a lot of people asking how to do it, or are still slightly confused between DNS forwarding vs Name servers.

Before I start, first find these two things:

The login information to the control panel your domain register provides you.
The name servers that your web hosting company provided you with. They will be in your welcome email more than likely.

OK so now login to your domain register’s website. Click the manage domain name link(or something similar) then click a link that says Change Name Servers(or something similar).

You will be presented with 2 text box areas. They might already have name servers in there – probably your domain register’s. What you will want to do is replace their name servers with the name servers provided by your web hosting company. Click Save.

The 24 Hour DNS Propagation Period

After your change your name servers, you typically need to wait 12-24 hours for the DNS changes to propagate world wide. During this time, you will notice that your domain name is still pointing to your domain register. This is OK. Just be patient, it will change. Once it is all settled, your domain name will now be pointed to your web host.

DNS forwarding vs Name Servers

I find that a lot of my clients simply forward their domain name to our web hosting servers via IP, rather than changing their domain name to our name servers. I personally wouldn’t recommend this, but it might be useful in some situations. For instance, with DNS forwarding, you do not have to wait for the 24 hour DNS propagation.

However, if your web host switches the web server’s main IP, it is likely that your site will go down and you will have no idea why.

What is the fastest you have ever seen a domain name propagate? The fastest I have seen is 4 hours…

0bones.com updated to 1.1. Start, build, and promote your website for free.

admin — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:47:30 +0000

Hello All,

My apologies for my lack of updates lately. I have been very busy trying to get our new social web hosting service updated and fully functional. I am glad to announce that finally, after many months, we have finally got 0bones fully functional and that we are now accepting new signups once again.

0bones.com – Start your website on the social webmaster’s community

Start your website for free – start a blog, forum, web portal, or custom website with ease. All users get cPanel access for complete control over their free web space
Learn website building techniques – learn about website building through our webmaster community. If you have problems or questions about your website, ask them in the webmasters forum
Promote your site – The best part about our service is that we allow our users to promote their website through the community. Everytime you do something on 0bones, you leave your website link behind. This is a great source of steady traffic to your new website!

Come check us out at http://0bones.com