Web Hosting

Unlimited Hosting Is Limited Hosting

Imagine a web host has a server with 600 gigabytes of hard drive space and 3000 GBs of total bandwidth (3 terabytes) per month. They offer plans that are \”Unlimited\” and 250 customers are already on the server, so that a total of 550 GB of space and all 3TB bandwidth has already been used this month.

And the web host is still selling accounts on that server! How is this possible?

Overselling

The answer is that the actual amount of space and bandwidth used by a hosting account is often much lower than the resource cap. Most web masters use only a small fraction of their allowed limit (if there is one). If the drives are full, a new one can be added. Bandwidth can be purchased to cover a small overage. This is what is known as \”Overselling.\”

Most web hosts that oversell services do not take CPU resources into consideration. Processor resources are finite – you can\’t just add in another on demand. And you, the hosted user, are stuck on a server that is constantly running all out just to keep up because of the sheer number of accounts hosted alongside you.

Overselling is why there are are so many web hosting companies out there and why so many seem to open up or shut down every day. Existing companies oversell to the point that the service tanks, the user gets fed up and finds an new host that is also overselling – a big plan at a crazy price is hard to pass up. As more and more clients jump ship, the old hosts pick up speed and the new ones get crushed under the load.

Overselling Sucks!

Now, overselling and unlimited hosting plans are not universally bad. For most users, this kind of shared hosting is perfectly fine. However, some sites are more CPU intensive, relying heavily on databases and PHP. WordPress sites are a common example – as sites become more popular, larger, or add more features and plugins, it\’s not necessarily the disk space or bandwidth that becomes strained, it\’s the server\’s RAM and processors.

Many web hosts consider excessive use of these resources to be cause for canceling your hosting account. This is commonly called \”TOS\’ing\” an account. Unlimited Hosting does not cover CPU resources. Having a popular site can actually be a violation of your Terms of Service!

How Do I Know How Overloaded My Server Is?

Log into your cpanel. Click on \”Service Status.\” You should now see a table of stats and a row of colored circles. Here are some signs your server might be overloaded:

1. Any of the status lights are NOT green
2. Any of the services are down
3. Server load is constantly over.90 (1 means NONE of the processors has cycles to spare)
4. Memory or Disk usage is consistently above 80%

These are not signs that your site is a resource hog, only indicators of how hard your server is working to serve all the hosting accounts. Just because your site is not a CPU hog doesn\’t mean someone else\’s site isn\’t making yours slow and unstable.

What Can I Do To Limit My Resource Use?

Here are some ideas to keep your account from getting canceled:

1. Use a cache. There are several different cache plugins available for WordPress. Caches store data that can be reused for multiple users, instead of having the site reload data from the database every time a visitor makes a request.

2. Use a CDN. Content Delivery Networks store your site\’s most commonly used files offsite and deliver them directly to your visitors.

3. Make fewer database calls. Using fewer WordPress plugins, or forum extensions will easy the load on your database server.

These tips will will also make your site faster.

Help! My Web Host TOS\’d Me Off My Unlimited Hosting Plan!

If your site gets shut down for resource abuse, you have a few options:

1. You can rent a virtual private server or dedicated server. This can be expensive, especially if you are not an experienced server administrator and need a \”managed\” solution.

2. You can try signing up for another unlimited plan at another web host, but be sure to limit your resource use from now on, or you\’ll probably get in trouble again.

3. Find a shared hosting provider that does not oversell. Web Hosts that do not oversell are rare and usually charge higher rates than more popular oversold web hosts, but are far cheaper and easier to use than dedicated or virtual servers.

If you\’re a professional web designer or developer, you no doubt have clients with websites. These clients may be hosting with another company and paying anywhere from $49.00 per month to $4.95 per month. Regardless of where they host, that\’s money that you\’re not participating in. Why? Could you use another $400 to $1500 per month coming in with no effort on your part? Of course you could! It will keep the wife happy and/or keep the girlfriend drinking good wine.

Here\’s how you can get free hosting and then resell it to your clients and keep 100% of the margin. You will spend whatever a Reseller Account costs from the hosting company you choose and approximately $14.95/mo to achieve this but it will pay for itself within 3 months if you implement it.

1. Go to one of the major hosting companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, DreamHost, HostGator etc.

2. Sign up as a Reseller. If you can afford it, sign up for the best reseller plan they have.

3. All of these hosting companies offer some sort of \”Premium\” hosting account. Using this Premium Account you can host as many websites as you like. You also get unlimited storage and bandwidth.

4. After you purchase the Premium hosting account, attach it to a domain name and simply put a coming soon page in the root directory.

5. Log in to your Premium account CP and go to Domain Management. Add the clients domain. It will ask you to create a new directory. Create one for the client and log out. (Be sure to read the online Help file if you need additional instructions.)

6. Wait 30 minutes and then log in again. You should see, inside your domain management area, your client\’s domain or some sort of verification that the setup process has completed

7. Now FTP into your new Premium account and confirm that the new directory was created.

8. If you see the new directory, post a simple index.htm page with COMING SOON in it. Nothing fancy for now, we\’ll come back and create a better one later.

9. Now that everything is set up on your end, log in to your client\’s domain registrar and change the ANAME record for their domain to the IP of your Premium hosting account. If they have emails already setup, be mindful of this and write down their MX records for your records and in case these records get changed when the ANAME propagates (You may or may not have to re-enter the MX records but write them down nonetheless.). Save the ANAME record and log out.

10. Within a few hours, their domain name should resolve at your Premium Hosting IP. When it does, your Premium hosting account will know what directory to point it to and you will see your Coming Soon page when you go to their URL..

At this point, what you have effectively done is secured free hosting for the client. Next, simply charge them whatever amount you charge for hosting and bill it annually. Under $200 for the year is a tolerable amount for most people. Doing this allows you to capture 100% of the hosting fees and provide clients with world-class hosting services.

What if my client wants FTP access to their account?

Simple. Just create an additional FTP user in your Premium account and assign access to their specific directory. They won\’t be able to access anyone else\’s stuff. This is a simple, effective and profitable way to capture revenue you may be missing. Some may argue that it\’s not free since you\’re paying the $14.95 per month. If you get just ONE client, the account is free for you. Additionally, you can now sell all kinds of website related products via your reseller account and even hosting accounts if your client prefers automated monthly billing.

There are many web hosting/domain name services available. They all provide the same products with different names. Some are a little cheaper for some things and a little more expensive for others. When you find one that you will want to work with it is a matter of typing the name you would like to use for your web site. It is either available exactly the way you want it or something similar. In an extreme case you may want something so bad you may find a way to buy it from someone.

• Products
• Services
• Domain
• Protection
• Web Sites

Let\’s start with domains. Type your name that you desire into the box that the page will provide. They will show all the different extensions that you could try to purchase such as.com,.net,.mobi, etc. The choices are many, but they are also limited by the audience that you try to attract. The.mobi is for mobile phones,.com is for business,.info is for information. People will do their searches using the proper extension. So you may want to purchase the whole package and have the exclusive rights to all of those names.

There are people who just buy popular names and phrases and then re-sell them to the highest bidders. The power is in the hands of those with the foresight to see where trends will take the web surfers.

There will be providers that will offer services such as building a site for you for a cost. You give them your idea and they will create it for you and even upload it to your site for you. It really doesn\’t matter what your computer skills are as long as you can tell someone your ideas and they are able to create a first class site using all of the latest tactics to get your site in front of as many people as they possibly can.

You can\’t sell anything if people won\’t visit your site.

You can even create more web pages by creating sub domains in your hosting account. Let\’s use the example of where the site starts with http:// and the www followed by a name and then a dot com. You can then create a file in your hosting account with the sub domain of http:// and then follow it with a new name and the the same name that you used in the original domain name followed by the dot com. You could make many sites without having to buy a ton of domain names for each and every site that you may want to put up on the web.

In your domain hosting account you add a folder with a name, wait for it to become active and your files to the folder and using your FTP protocol you upload the site and you have another site up and it didn\’t cost any extra money.

Notice that instead of starting with www the sub domain starts with http:// prefix. It is just as simple as that. Good luck.

There are many different interfaces that can be used with hosting accounts but one of the most popular is cPanel. This is a web host manager that lets a user perform many different functions for their domain with a graphical interface. It\’s become extremely popular because it\’s easy.

There are a variety of features that make cPanel hosting desired by most users of hosting accounts.

Fantastico is one of the better features to cPanel. This is an application that allows one to install a wide variety of popular scripts for blogs, content management systems, and others. It offers a quick and easy way of putting these onto the server creating and managing your MySQL databases for you without having to manually edit files and use FTP. This feature is very good for new users especially.

Another quality feature are the stat programs. There is both Webilizer and AWStats which are two of the most popular. This lets a user see the traffic and bandwidth that their site is using. One can analyze where there traffic is coming from and which pages are the most popular on the website.

The webmail programs are very easy to use on cPanel. There are three different programs that one can use to read webmail while logged in.

PhpMyAdmin is an application that makes editing various databases on the hosting account easy. Instead of using a text based interface which is confusing to even better than average users, you get a point and click interface that makes changes quite a bit easier than the old methods.

There are other options out there besides cPanel, but the advantages for the average user are almost too good to pass up.

cPanel is an interface that makes managing a hosting account much easier. The point and click applications make using this back office to a hosting account much simpler than most other programs or even text based interfaces.

I often feel like an old curmudgeon when I complain about hosting accounts. There are so many of them and so many of them are wrought with problems that can cost the client time and money. I have my own hosting preference, not just as a reseller who makes a profit, but because they work. They save me time and therefore save my clients time and money.

So how can hosting cost you more than your your yearly fee?

1. Free Hosting. Remember when Mom and Dad warned you don\’t get something for nothing? Remember how often this proves to be true? Beware of \”free\” hosting as it often starts with a very small amount of storage space and will cost big-time to add more. Some free hosting accounts require you to refer friends for \”paid\” hosting to continue to qualify for no-cost hosting. Bandwidth is seldom discussed but can cost you money: low-budget hosting probably allows for less bandwidth (the amount of traffic that they allow to occur between your website and the rest of the internet). I have a client whose story was picked up by CNN who also broadcasted their website address. In one day they had over 250,000 visits to their site and quickly exceeded the allowed bandwidth on their hosting account… with no additional charges while lesser hosts charge for exceeding allotted bandwidth. Ouch!

2. Down Time. You want a website so people can find you online, right? Cut-rate hosting accounts often are plagued with downtime… time when the server isn\’t working and your website can not be seen online. I have one client whose sub-standard hosting was going down for days at a time. Either you or your web master will be spending time and money calling the hosting to get to the root of the problem.

3. Security. My favorite breach of web security was a client hosting with a very small, low cost, company somewhere in the Mid-West. The client wanted their site statistics and when I called the hosting company they didn\’t ask for any ID and put the site statistics online where they are accessible by anyone including the client\’s competitors. How much business will your competitors grab when they can view the inner workings of your web traffic?

4. Cheap Hosting Without Support. Here\’s another fun hitch when using a low budget hosting account… no phone support. These companies charge an additional fee if you want to contact them by phone, otherwise the only way to contact their support staff or anyone at the hosting company is by email.

5. Account Skinny on Features. Often a client will purchase a low-end hosting account before engaging a web designer. They can end up with an account that is not robust enough to handle an interactive website… even something as simple as a contact form. Or they purchase Windows hosting when they want to work with programing that runs on a Unix server, or vice versa. Most hosting accounts offer an array of features, however it pays to engage your web consultant before choosing a hosting account to be sure you are getting what you need.

You can save time and money on your website. Consult with a professional design and development company before you enter into a hosting agreement.