What is a VPS?

By combining virtualization technology with the method of separating a single server into multiple (a la “shared hosting”), virtual private servers were made possible.  With that said, since a VPS is “virtually” separate from other servers, it basically functions like a dedicated server with features such as independent resources (RAM and disk space), and has its own operating system and software.  However, since a VPS is still technically in a shared environment, you can’t avoid having shared aspects, with one of the few being the central processing unit (CPU).  But at the same time, you’re able to get the cost effective benefit of being on a shared server with much more advanced features.

3 Levels of Hosting Compared

Who Needs a VPS?

Okay, let’s say that you start off on a shared hosting plan, which is sufficient for basic websites or blogs mainly made up of static, HTML-based content and have moderate traffic.  But what if your website or blog eventually grows in size, popularity, you add dynamic content, or your business is on the rise (which are usually goals of most website owners)? 

Well this is a common scenario for small and medium-sized businesses and active bloggers whose websites or blogs require a flexible and scalable hosting solution, but they’re not quite in need of a fully dedicated server nor are ready to make the financial investment toward one.  This is where a VPS comes in as a perfect fit.

Detail of VPS Features

Platform Control

• Root/SSH Access – Since you have your own operating system and software on a VPS, you can install, configure and upgrade any server-level software that’s compatible.   You can also utilize the command-line access and have the option of operating as the root user.
• Email Server – You’re given a unique IP address and have access to your own email server that only manages email from your domain, which gives you more control, increased performance and security. 
• Security – Most hosting companies will also give you full control of customizing your firewall and setting up access levels of IP addresses for different services.

 
Performance

• Scalability – If you’re like most website owners with a goal of constant improvement or growth whether by creating more websites or increasing traffic on your current one, there’s a high chance of outgrowing your hosting plan if you’re using a shared server.  Then, you have to deal with the hassle of upgrading and moving.  But with a VPS, when you need extra room, you have the option of adding more resources without having to switch machines.
• Dynamic Website Support – Since you have a high level of control where you can modify your settings and usage patterns with a VPS, you have the ability to have greater support when it comes to handling resource-intensive applications or large, dynamic websites.

 
Support Levels
As with the variety of hosting plans, there is a variety of support that you can get for your account.  For a VPS specifically,  there are 3 levels of support possible, but the availabilities of each depend on your hosting provider.

Burstable RAM
Burstable RAM is a unique feature offered on a VPS (also depending on your hosting company), which is basically allocated memory that is stored and available when needed.  Utilizing burstable RAM can be a lifesaver in times of unanticipated traffic spikes, such as the “Slashdot effect” or the “Digg effect” where your website can get linked to a popular website causing a sudden major increase in your traffic.  And if you don’t have enough resources to handle the load, it can decrease the speed of your website or possibly cause it to crash.

VPS Pricing

Not only is VPS hosting an attractive alternative because of its beneficial features, but it also has a nice looking price tag.  You get the closest thing to having a fully dedicated server, which can cost hundreds of dollars per month, but at a fraction of its price.  And with the demand of VPS hosting on the rise, the prices are getting lower and lower.

Conclusion

To VPS, or not to VPS? Evaluate your requirements regarding what type of website(s) you want to get hosted in terms of  resource needs, features, support requirements and price. Unless you plan to have a very basic website or have the means to go directly to a dedicated  server, keep in mind that there is a middle ground with VPS hosting.

About the Author
Maria A. writes for InMotion Hosting, a leading provider of web hosting committed to excellence in customer support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  InMotion Hosting specializes in fast, reliable and affordable Business Class, Virtual Private Server (VPS) and Dedicated web hosting services.

• Installation of Software Apps - a server side program or software update that the client may need.
• Configuration Tuning – MySQL or Apache performance modifications.
• Complex Software Set Ups - Configuration of multiple components to work together without conflicts.

Doug showed me around the A Small Orange Web Hosting office and AtlantaNAP facility. Call me strange, but I love visiting the inside of big datacenters. The isolation, the computing power, the air condition… I don’t quite know what draws me to them.

Look at those clean floors and feel those servers purring.

I didn’t ask if the ramp was for people or servers.

A peaceful spot in AtlantaNAP. Be assured you won’t be disturbed here.

Douglas Hanna, CEO of A Small Orange Hosting, and Clickfire Writer in Days Past stands between the fenced wall of server racks at AtlantaNAP

The unassuming appearance of the AtlantaNAP building (from outside, it could have been mistaken for a cotton warehouse) and the extreme security gave me an eerie feeling and reminded me of the super secret Wildfire facility in the movie, The Andromeda Strain.

I think you can get feel for the AtlantaNAP datacenter despite the limitations of my iPhone camera. The tour turned out well despite the forgotten camera. Doug got a new hosting client. I got a new server :)

Before you choose a hosting plan for your webiste initiative, it is important that you understand the most popular hosting option online – cloud hosting.

The Different Types of Cloud Hosting

In general, cloud hosting can be split up into two different categories: public hosting and managed private cloud hosting (also known as enterprise cloud hosting). With public hosting, you share a set of virtual servers with other web masters. With managed private cloud hosting, you have your own dedicated servers for your storage needs. Enterprise cloud hosting solutions provide all of the benefits of a cloud hosting solution while allowing you to manage your servers yourself for security measures and greater data storage flexibility. Enterprise hosting is perfect for larger businesses or webmasters that deal with sensitive data on their servers – data like intellectual property that could be vulnerable on a public cloud.

To understand the differences between these two major cloud computing types, think of how you might eat a pizza.

With the public cloud, imagine that you are eating a pizza with a few of your friends. Everyone can take a piece of the pizza when they want it but nobody has their own pizza – and you have to eat the pizza put out for you instead of being able to choose the toppings. With managed private cloud hosting, you can think of everyone as having their own individual pizza – where they can choose the toppings.

This relates to cloud hosting because a public cloud hosting solution allows multiple web masters to access the same virtual server network but they cannot control some aspects of the hosting option. For example:

• You cannot control where your data is stored (which individual server).
• You lose some security features with public hosting (your information is stored along with others).
• You cannot control the speed at which your web space loads (most public cloud servers are limited to about 10 mbps).

So, public cloud hosting might not be the best option for web sites that regularly handle a large amount of traffic or deal with streaming high definition video. However, the public cloud also has its share of benefits. For example:

• You can trim your IT budget – all servers are virtual and hosting plans are cheap when you are willing to share the servers with others.
• You can save time – the public cloud does not really require any management on your part. You just choose the data that gets stored and your third party cloud hosting provider handles the rest.
• You can forget about maintenance – your public cloud hosting provider will also maintain the physical servers so you don’t have to clean and maintain a set of physical servers.

With enterprise cloud hosting from Rackspace and others, you have several options for cloud computing. For example, you might have a few physical servers in your possession. However, you regularly need more processing power or memory during peak traffic hours or to test out a new web application. Enterprise cloud hosting allows you to use a virtual layer of servers as either your own dedicated server network or as an addition to any physical servers you might own. The primary difference between a public cloud and a managed private cloud is that you have full control over the following with private cloud hosting:

1. Who can access your data.
2. Where your data is stored.
3. Who manages your storage needs and server networks.
4. How your network is organized.
5. Who can access your data at any given time.

With an enterprise hosting solution, you can also boost the performance speed of your servers. For instance, the typical managed private cloud hosting solution could run at 100 mbps. With a collection of physical servers also supporting the network, the sky really is the limit with storage space and processing speed.

There are a few disadvantages to a managed private cloud server. One of the most important is that it costs a little more than public cloud. In addition, you must usually sign a long term contract from a cloud computing company. Of course, you are also responsible for managing your enterprise cloud hosting solution. Luckily, as you will read in the next section, doing so is easy.

How to Manage an Enterprise Hosting Solution

Enterprise cloud hosting solutions provide users with their own dedicated and discrete collection of resources – both physical and virtual servers. Each network is managed with a collection of virtual servers that act as the flexible portion of your network. So, if you maintain some physical servers but need more storage space or bandwidth, you can instantly add a virtual server – a far cry from the days when you would need to purchase additional physical servers when the need arose. Doing so locked you into the purchase, of course, if your additional data needs dropped off and you no longer needed multiple physical servers; not an issue for enterprise hosting solutions.

Building an Enterprise Network Server

Although dependent on your specific service provider, most enterprise hosting solutions will come with software that allows you to organize your individual storage units across different web site or applications. You can also compare the amount of storage, memory and processing power that you have purchased with the amount that you are currently using.

Each of your individual networks, if applicable, should be divided into separate environments for easy access and management. For example, if you manage hosting for several large e-commerce web sites as well as a company database for your employees, you would likely want to split each of these individual areas into different environments – especially if each one requires a great deal of storage, perhaps with different security implementations like fire walls and password protection.

When building your server, you will have two different options: to use a template server to quickly inject your physical and virtual storage or to create a custom template for your storage needs. It is important to carefully evaluate your storage needs. If there is not a template that fits your business model, there is no need to use a template when it takes only a few minutes to create your own custom environment.

Bringing an Enterprise Hosting Network Online

Once you have implemented your server environments, you can begin deciding which servers will go online with which public IP addresses. In order to bring a server online, you must simply select the IP address that will be associated with that server environment and choose your preferred protocol. Finally, you can create a name for the network as it appears online and save it to your workspace. Many services will then require you to create a node to bring the servers online. Creating this node is as simple as re-entering the information for that server environment to attach it to the Internet. This is where managing your enterprise hosting solution can allow you to enter multiple public IP addresses or customize access to those servers.

Could Cloud Hosting be Right for You?

A managed private cloud hosting solution allows you to take advantage of the flexibility provided by cloud hosting and combine it with security features that you would expect on a private cloud hosting network. This type of managed hosting network does require some management on behalf of the user; one of its primary benefits. Managing an enterprise hosting solution is easy with a high quality service provider as you can use custom or prefabricated templates to set up your network(s) and add or remove storage as you need it – quickly and easily.

Public cloud hosting allows you to save money on your cloud computing but does not afford the same security benefits as managed private cloud (the lack of a firewall, for example). When you use a public cloud hosting solution, you are sharing storage space with other web masters to cut costs but lose control over where your data is stored and how much control you have over that data as it appears on your virtual servers.

One of the major concerns with VPS hosting options (virtual private server) is that there is no guarantee that you will receive all of the resources that you need – or pay for. With VPS nodes, other users of that same node can begin bleeding into your resources, limiting the amount available to you. Many VPS hosting users switch to cloud hosting for this reason alone – you are guaranteed the resources you need and can scale on-demand. Finally, cloud hosting solutions give you the benefit of being able to customize your servers any time you need to do so. With VPS hosting, this can be very difficult.

When you choose cloud hosting from a third party hosting provider, be sure to evaluate your specific business needs before choosing a type of cloud hosting plan. After all, you never want to be stuck without enough storage space or processing power to accomplish your business goals. Think carefully about whether you are fine sharing your pizza with others, or if you want a whole pizza to yourself.

This article was written by Anthony Benedict, who helps run and maintain Rackspace.com which delivers enterprise-level hosting services to businesses of all sizes and kinds around the world.

The short answer: no. There is no such thing as a BlueHost coupon. Most people don’t know this, and the result is that a couple thousand people use Google search to try to find BlueHost coupons. Those searchers will find tons and tons of sites talking about BlueHost coupons as though they do exist, and none of them will ever actually have a BlueHost coupon code anywhere.

Don’t believe me? We asked BlueHost directly. By using their live online support, we asked them if there is any such thing as a BlueHost coupon or BlueHost coupon code. This is what they said:

Not only did BlueHost inform us that they don’t offer coupon codes, they warned us to be careful about scams. That’s a pretty big deal.

So, why are so many sites claiming they have a BlueHost coupon? It’s the same reason a lot of people do a lot of things. Money. BlueHost offers an affiliate program to anyone who has a website. They put a link to BlueHost, and every time that somebody clicks on that link and buys BlueHost hosting, the site owner will get some amount of money in exchange for the customer.

We’ve tested the BlueHost.com affiliate program for an extended period and found that the tracking is above average as compared with other Web Hosting affiliates and payments generally made on time.

Some of the less-then-honest sites will claim to have BlueHost coupons just to get you to visit their site and click on their link, all so that they can earn a quick buck.

The problem is that this confuses the consumer. They see so many sites offering a BlueHost coupon, and they become convinced that such a thing exists. Therefore, they keep looking for one. The result is that the problem perpetuates itself. There’s the thought that there might be a BlueHost coupon code out there, so someone searches it. Then, they see tons of sites offering BlueHost coupons. They then believe that it must exist, so they keep searching for one. It’s a waste of the consumer’s time, and a pretty gross one at that.

But not all is lost. There is a way to get a discount for BlueHost web hosting. Now, it’s not a coupon, but it does come from the affiliate accounts I mentioned before. Despite any potential ill intentions, there are some who offer this affiliate link with good intentions, and any of them can be used to get you a discount. As an addition to the affiliate program, anybody who signs up for BlueHost by clicking on one of those affiliate links gets a special price. Their hosting is usually $6.95 per month. By using an affiliate link, you can get prices as listed below:

• 12 months: $4.95 per month: $59.40 total
• 24 months: $3.95 per month: $94.80 total
• 36 months: $3.95 per month: $142.20 total

Make no mistake, though. This is not a BlueHost coupon code. This is a promotional price, and it only applies until the customer renews with BlueHost, at which point the price returns to $6.95 per month. However, there isn’t a huge rush to grab this promo until you are ready. This promo is available through affiliates only, but it doesn’t have any set end date. And it’s been going on for over a year now. We asked BlueHost about this as well, just to make sure, and this is what they said:

So, the definitive answer is that there is no such thing as a BlueHost coupon code, but they do have an ongoing promotional rate for new accounts that sign up through an affiliate link.

Hopefully, this has cleared up any confusion about whether or not a BlueHost coupon exists.

But, were you looking for a web host that does offer coupons? We can help there, as well as help you determine which ones are good hosts. You can visit our Web Host Reviews page to see which web hosts have proven to be a good value, then you can visit the CouponClaim.com Hosting Coupons page to see which ones offer coupons. For example, you can take a look at our IX Web Hosting Review, which has an excellent 20% off coupon on our coupons page.

Click here for the BlueHost Discount Link

What if I told you there was a company out there that registered 2% of the Internet’s domains, was run by a guy who has done missionary work in Taiwan, and even played a role in the 2008 Presidential campaign?  You’d be interested to know which company it was, right?

Sometimes, some of the most interesting companies aren’t the ones with the Googleplex’s – they can be found everywhere.  That is, if you know where to look – like if you’re looking at BlueHost, for example.

If you’re an avid fan and reader of Clickfire – and who isn’t? – you’ve already come across our BlueHost Review:  you’ve read about the functionality, the pricing structure, and the glory of its “top-of-the-line control panel.”  You’re already aware of the features, but what about the behind-the-scenes action that seems to be driving this company and its founder, Intern-entrepreneur Matt Heaton?

Let’s dig a little deeper into this Web hosting provider known as BlueHost and see what else we can dig up.

Big fat BlueHost ad banner in case you didn’t notice

#1:  BlueHost Does Not Host Porn

I know I’ve already lost the pervs with this one, which is actually a great reason to start with the BlueHost dirt – or lack thereof.  This is in direct contrast to HostGator which, as we noted previously  (for more comparisons between the two, check out the post, BlueHost vs HostGator).

What’s the relevance of not hosting porn?  Well, if you’re like the Clickfire reader known as Jon (you can see his comment at the top of the “BlueHost vs HostGator” comments section), you’ve lost international contacts in China because China blocks domain hosting companies that host pornography like HostGator.  Not good if you’re doing a lot of business in China – but good if you’re interested in BlueHost.

BlueHost is actually strict enough about this rule that it might suspend your site for a little while if a little porn finds its way onto your forum or blog comments – so be careful about what you let seep through.

Said BlueHost President Matt Heaton on his blog:

Bluehost does not and will not tolerate adult material of any kind on our servers. Sometimes profit comes second and personal responsibility and ethics come first. I am not telling other hosts to not provide adult hosting services, but I wish that they would come to that conclusion on their own.

Well said.

#2: BlueHost is Not Matt Heaton’s First Success

The aforementioned man in charge of BlueHost, founder and President Matt Heaton, is no stranger to cyberspace.  The thirty-something businessman describes himself as a “serial entrepreneur” and the claim stands up to the toughest of scrutiny.  Heaton opened Computer Warehouse when he was 21, which became a bit of a computer chain, added “Free50″ later on, founded HostMonster, and then, in 2003, added BlueHost to his resume – though I’m guessing he doesn’t exactly need to use it often.

By the way, he also speaks Mandarin, has five children, and has been a nationally-ranked ping pong player.  Maybe he’s preparing for a run for Dos Equis’ next “Most Interesting Man in the World” campaign.

Hey, speaking of running for things…

#3: BlueHost Played a Part in the 2008 Presidential Campaigns

Heaton donated $500 to the Mitt Romney 2008 Presidential campaign, which in and of itself isn’t a controversial thing.  The move, however, raised a few eyebrows when an anti-Fred Thompson Web site known as “phoneyfred.org” showed up – and had been registered with BlueHost.

Said Politico:

The owner of the web-host provider used to launch an anti-Fred Thompson website is a donor to Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Matt Heaton, President and CEO of Utah-based bluehost.com, gave $500 to Romney in June.

Until earlier today, his company hosted the domain “phoneyfred.org” that included a trove of personal and political opposition research on Thompson.   But after I disclosed the anti-Thompson site just after Noon, the site came down.

Heaton declined to reveal who purchased the domain name.

“I can’t give out any information about site ownership,” he wrote in an e-mail.  “I don’t know why it was taken down either. That isn’t something I deal with and is also information we wouldn’t be providing to anyone but the site owner.”

Maybe this didn’t have a big impact on the campaign, but you have to admit it was interesting to see a Web hosting company walk into the fray.

#4: BlueHost is Hosting Over 1.5 Million Domains

…at least, according to Matt Heaton’s blog.

Congratulations to us!  Our organization is now hosting more than 1.5 million domain names and nearly 2% of all domain names in use on the whole internet.  I think that is amazing.  Thanks to everyone that uses and recommends our services.  Hope to post when we reach 2 million real soon!

2% of a market might sound like a small number, but how would you like to handle 2% of the domains registered on the internet?

According to Heaton, the initial goals of BlueHost were actually to reach only approximately 20,000 domains.  You don’t need a calculator to tell you they’ve already well surpassed that goal, now getting something in the neighborhood of 850 signups per day – perhaps much more.

#5: BlueHost Is Built on a Foundation of Success

As already noted, BlueHost is not the first successful brain-child of founder Matt Heaton – in fact, it’s only the more recent in what appears to be a very successful timeline of events in the young business leader’s life.

Some of the other ventures Heaton has pursued include Computer Warehouse, Free50, HostMonster, and even other non-business pursuits like missionary work in Taiwan.

But that’s not all.  Heaton has also written software to track Web traffic stats (“freestats.com”), improved it (“sitetracker.com”), started FreeServers.com, and started 50Megs.com.  How’s that for real-world experience?

I even checked many of the popular web hosting forums and zilch! Most had not even heard of InMotion. The few that had really had nothing to offer outside of rumor or gossip. I found this to be a pleasant surprise and went to their web site to have a look around. What I found was, in my opinion, a possible place to host my sites long into the future.

They’ve been around since 2001 and the fact that to this day, one cannot find hardly anything bad said about them speaks volumes. Especially in this day and age of ‘dogging out’ any web host who, in a customer’s view, has done them a disservice.

InMotion Hosting, like many others out there, offers several plans to choose from such as Dedicated, VPS, Business Class Hosting and Personal/Cheap Hosting. In keeping with the rest of the competition, upon deciding on what plan best suits your needs, InMotion offers you the opportunity to upgrade at any time as your needs grow.

What impressed me is their Support Teams are right here in the USA. Seeing as I’m in the US too, that’s a plus for me. They can be reached in several ways too like toll-free phone, email and Support Ticket. What little I’ve needed to contact Support has been done in way under an hour. I give their response times top marks. I’m not referring to the auto-response email either but their actual response from an actual person. No canned replies either. The ones I’ve received were personable and tailored to my particular issue.

They have 2 DC’s (data centers) now on opposite coasts which to me makes a lot of sense. One is in Los Angeles, CA and the other is in Washington, D.C. They even allow subscribers of their VPS and Business Class hosting plans to choose which DC to host their data in. They call it their ‘Max Speed Zone Enabled’ offer.

I won’t get into the technical details of the how’s and what for’s but as a testimonial to the perceived speed increase, I asked that my data be transferred from the west coast DC to the one on the east coast upon discovering this new feature that InMotion offered. I actually just asked about it in a Support Ticket and they told me that it’d be no problem at all. This was after being hosted with them for around 8 months at the time. No charge for the move either!

Needless to say, I was again impressed. And the perceived increase in speed? They were right on with it too. My site’s load times decreased markedly plus my emails seemed to follow suit. Two of my sites are WordPress installations, one of which has a fair amount of traffic.

I know there’s a lot of web hosts out there. Many of them are resellers. Some are good, some are bad and some just plain outshine the rest. This last category is the one I’d place InMotion Hosting in. So much so that I became an affiliate for them. I don’t see much traffic for it and to date haven’t had anyone sign up to my knowledge off of the affiliate link. But still, I’m impressed enough to advertise for them on my site. Call me biased if you want but when you find a good deal, especially in web hosting, you let others know!

I can sum up my impressions with InMotion Hosting in 5 ways:

• Honest (very big in my book!)
• Reliable (no down time to date)
• Great Support Team (no canned replies, professional, courteous and friendly)
• Fair Pricing (no surprises, you get what you pay for)
• An impressive 90 day money back guarantee

In a nutshell, InMotion Hosting is the sleeper race car of the web hosting industry! You don’t think much about it until you notice that what they’ve sold you is what you’re paying for. In other words, you’re getting your money’s worth and a whole lot more.

On a side note, I don’t work for InMotion Hosting nor am I being paid to write this for them or in their behalf. I just think that much of them and in this era of always seeing the bad about people and companies, to me, it’s nice to see the good about them from time to time too.

_______________________________________________________________

Scott Wilson is an avid Linux hobbiest who has a background in web design that reaches back to 1999. He also worked for a web host based in California as a remote CSR where he learned about the web hosting industry. Scott’s blog is Random Bytes of Reality.

I emailed customer service, but they wouldn’t have answered quickly enough. So I picked up the phone to call customer service and spent 45 minutes on hold – while at the same time clicking the refresh button on the browser every 30 seconds in the hopes that my baby would reappear. It didn’t, and the poor girl on the other end of the line could only say, “I’m sorry – we’re working on it. It’s on our end, and we’re doing the best we can.”

“Will all of my information still be in tact when it comes back up?” I managed to spit out? “Yes, it will be there. We don’t anticipate any problems.” I asked how long it would take. She didn’t know.

Needless to say, I didn’t believe her. I continued in my hypervigilant state, refreshing the browser more times than I could count and futilely attempting to log into an administration page I knew would never load. If only I had known there were more productive things I could have been doing with my time while waiting for the server to grace me with its functionality.

So your website is down. What now?

10. Follow up with your Hosting Provider

Because, really, you’re site should be very important to them and they’re going to jump through hoops to make you happy. Or not. Fixing the problem is your host’s responsibility. Holding your host accountable for statuses is yours. Someone with a less important problem might just take their attention away. And, ah, you’ll feel so much better.

9. Search for Hosting Reviews

This isn’t the first time you’ve had trouble with your server and it probably won’t be the last. There just may be a few better and even cheaper hosts out there. Of course, when your server comes back up you’ll decide that moving your blog isn’t worth the effort, but at least it’ll give you a point of reference to compare just in case.

8. Create New Content to Publish when your Site comes back.

Open up good old Microsoft Word or whatever on your desktop and get busy writing blog entries, web content pages or fire up your favorite graphics editor. This way you’ll be able to post them when your server comes back up. Better yet, write a blog entry about the trauma you experience when your server went down. Your readers will love it!

7. Write a Guest Post for a Friend’s Blog

Writing a guest post for another blog is great for a couple of reasons. First, you’re helping out a friend by providing valuable content. Second, you’ll draw attention to your name and your own website, creating interest, backlinks, and hopefully traffic.

6. Troubleshoot the outage.

It’s possible that there isn’t really a server outage. Perhaps you did something before you shut down the night before that caused your website to malfunction. Use your favorite network tool to troubleshoot the outage and determine if there is something you can fix to get your site back up and running a little quicker.

5. Go to one of those other hosts and start a second site.

A minisite can help support your labor of love site when you get it back and you’ll have something to work on if the server ever goes down again. Of course, you might want to work on it in the meantime as well. It’s up to you, though – and it will help you kill the time you’re wasting today.

4. Work on some of your other projects.

I know it’s tough to work when your children are sick, but leaving it all sit until your site gets better isn’t going to help. Focus on the others so that they don’t suffer from neglect in the meantime.

3. Work on your social networking campaign.

Visit other blogs, catch up on your forum posting, and socialize on other websites. Just ignore the fact that the link you leave to your blog won’t work if it’s clicked on today. A little venting won’t hurt.

2. Suspend your PPC campaigns.

This is actually very important. You’re still going to have to pay for clicks If you are running a PPC campaign that is supposed to send traffic to your site, even if your site is down. Log into your account and suspend the campaign until the site is back to normal.

1. Forget about it.

Obsessing about outages produces zero results. You weren’t actually meant to get anything done today. Turn the computer off and find something else to do – take a walk, read a book, go back to bed. It’s not going to happen. Try again tomorrow.

The odds of your lame host permanently losing your website content somewhere on the vast internet are slim to none. When the server comes back up, your site will most likely be there and you can resume life as usual. Until then, you might as well take a break and relax. You’ll have your work cut out for you when the host comes back to life.

Web hosting support teams have to deal with a wide variety of issues. Many issues are purely technical. Others are a matter of communication between the hosting company and the customer. Some might just be the result of getting upset (who wouldn’t get upset after seeing their site go down?). To truly succeed in the saturated web hosting market, web hosts need to address the issues with a smile on their face and the best technical solutions at hand.

Here are the five most common web hosting issues I have seen from my experience in web hosting and how to address them:

1. How do I login to my account?
One of the first questions a new web hosting customer has after sign-up is “how do I login to my account?” It is a good question that often has two parts:

• Where do I go to login?
• What login information do I use?

The answer to both of questions may be right in front of you. Most web hosts send a well structured and thorough welcome email to new customers with account information, IP addresses, nameservers and a control panel URL to login and access your account. Most support teams should be able to answer the question without any trouble, but to make sure you get the service as quickly as possible, have all of the information you might need to verify your account handy. Include the last four digits of your credit card number, your domain name, name, etc. in the initial support ticket/email and it will help move the process along much faster.

2. Why isn’t my email working?
A lot of shared hosting customers use their accounts for email and that’s about it. Because of this, a lot of questions are about email. Common reasons for email not working are:

• The entire account and/or email account are exceeding their respective disk quotas
• The the password is incorrect
• The account is configured incorrectly
• There is a server level issue.

To fix these issues, check out your account and the configuration of your account in your email client first. See if email can be sent from webmail. If it can, then the problem is likely with the configuration of your desktop client. Try setting it up again, and if it still doesn’t work, ask your host to check into the account further.

3. How do I install –script-?
Many customers will signup with a web host with the specific intent of setting up a particular script (i.e. WordPress, Joomla, phpBB). How to set these scripts up (or what software to use) should be explained in a getting started section of your web site. How to access the getting started section should be prominently featured in the welcome email and when a customer emails or calls to ask how to setup the particular script, the representative that works with that customer can point them to that section of your web site and explain how it can help them. New customers should always be on the look out for programs like Fantastico, which make installing a variety of scripts a one minute process. Always check for Fantastico or a similar program before signing up for a web host if you think being able to easily install common scripts is important to you.

4. How do I get more domains working on my account?
The processes surrounding addon and parked domains can be very confusing to new web hosting customers. Addon and parked domains need to have the same DNS as the primary domain. Parked domains don’t do much, whereas add-on domains are usually fully functional domains within your primary control panel. Sometimes an addon domain will not be added properly on the server level, so if it still does not work after 48 hours, ask your web host to check into it.

5. How do I get my new site working?
This is a common question that mainly results from customers, usually new site owners, who have no idea what they need to do to get their website up and running. Many customers are confused with whether or not they need to transfer their domain to get it working at a particular host or if they just need to change their name servers. Some customers are still sorting out the difference in domain registrar and web host. These types of issues are almost always explained in the web host’s getting started guide and the short version (change your nameservers to get your site working right away and for the least money) should be mentioned prominently in the welcome email.

Some companies have special “getting started specialists” that deal exclusively with new customers, whereas others don’t differentiate between new and existing customers. It is often helpful to let representatives know you are a new customer and what your level of technical expertise is so they can adjust their answers accordingly.

These are just five of the many common issues that web host support teams encounter. Being able to put your hands on documentation that is well written, frequently updated, and most importantly, easy to understand, can make the difference between a hectic website launch and a smooth one. It is important to remember that Google is your friend, and oftentimes, the knowledge bases you find on other companies’ web sites can be just as useful as the one your own hosting company provides.

And of course, customer service representatives will appreciate you taking the time to explain the issue you’re experiencing fully. The more details you can include (in an easily readable format), the more help they can be and the sooner they can help to resolve your issue.

1) Offering Unlimited Space and Bandwidth
Offering unlimited space and bandwidth is dumb simply because it is basically impossible to honor the offering. Web hosts cannot feasibly offer unlimited space and bandwidth to customers. When customers start using a lot, hosts have to shut down the account. This chain of events has resulted in more than one PR disaster.

2) Big Promotions for New Services
After launching something really big (such as starting to offer Windows Hosting or a new product line of shared services), the first response is to start promoting it heavily. This is a prelude to disaster. The reason? Many hosts don’t have the technical expertise and/or man power to support systems they are unfamiliar with when demand is very high.

3) Making Jokes at Serious Issues
If you make a joke at a serious issue (like DreamHost did with their billing mistakes), you’re guaranteed to aggravate people. No one involved in a serious situation wants a company to take it lightly. If something serious happens, companies should treat it seriously.

4) Not Testing Backup Generators
Many a datacenter has gone down an extended amount of time because they did not properly test (if they even tested) their backup generators and power supplies. Servers need power of some sort to run and power is sometimes unreliable.

5) Claiming Low-end Celeron Servers Are Good
Dedicated server companies like Intel Celeron servers because they are generally pretty cheap. When they are cheap to the server company, they’re cheap to the customer. However, dedicated server companies often make the dumb mistake of marketing low-end Celeron servers as top of the line hardware with maximum reliability.

6) Using Outsourcing Firms
Outsourcing firms can be useful and some of them are very good, but a vast majority of outsourcing firms are absolutely horrible. Hiring a company to staff your helpdesk with employees who are often incompetent is a huge mistake.

7) Offering Free Trials without Requiring Credit Card Information
Occasionally a web host will offer a free trial without requiring credit card information to open up the account. This is an invitation to spammers and webmasters who operate illicit web sites to start using your services. They’ll login, send their spam, and leave. The only thing the company is left with is a big problem.

8) Not Honoring Guarantees
Basically every major web host has a money back guarantee. Many have an uptime and/or support guarantee in addition to that. However, when a host doesn’t honor the guarantees they provide or provide so many technicalities that almost no one qualifies, they are just asking for trouble. It’s really easy for a customer to cause a big stir about a bad experience and when companies don’t pay attention to this, it makes one wonder if the companies are stupid or if they are just cheap.

9) Not Hiring Qualified People
An organization is only as good as its people. When companies hire just to get “warm bodies” in chairs, they aren’t doing themselves or their customers any favors. It is better to be understaffed with great people than to be overstaffed with idiots.

10) Growing Too Fast
Countless companies make the mistake of growing too fast. Web hosting companies are no exception. Many web hosting companies think it is a good idea to keep marketing even though they are having trouble keeping up with orders and support.

11) Promotional Gimmicks
Not every product, feature, or gimmick that a web hosting company launches “revolutionizes web hosting.” In fact, most of them aren’t all they are cracked up to be. Hosting companies that bank of these little things setting them apart are in for a nasty surprise.

12) Hiding Things in the TOS
For each thing that a host hides in the terms of service, they are hurting themselves. Hiding things in the terms of service is useless and a dumb move. Customers eventually notice and will complain. Some companies, like Globat, charge up to $150 for a “contract breach” fee.

13) Website Design Clichés
You’ve seen the pictures of the smiling woman in front of the server rack? What about the perfectly organized, perfectly lit up server rack? Using these already overused images is a bad idea and bad design.

Needless to say, web hosts can and often do dumb things. Every industry has its dumb companies that don’t seem to get what it takes to run a successful, ethical business. But, many of these violations seem so much like common sense. Web hosts, are you listening?

Who isn’t enticed by the flashy banners and scrolling links advertising “FREE WEB HOSTING!” anywhere and everywhere on the web? With everyone and their brother now owning a blog or website, these free services are just as popular today as when they first hit the market around 1995. Any webmaster worth his salt remembers the days of Geocites and Angelfire and the frustrations that ensued. And as we’ve all learned by now, anything that’s “free” is bound to have a caveat…so what’s the deal with free web hosting? It seems like such a great proposition on the surface: you give me a place to park my web page and I’ll let you post a few ads on said page. Simple!

Not so fast. As it turns out, with free web hosting (and nearly everything else on the web), you get what you pay for.

The Longevity Issue: Have you noticed that you don’t really hear about Lunarpages or Tripod sites anymore? That’s because like most free hosting services, these giants of industry eventually went paid. One of the biggest pitfalls of free web hosting is that your site is often about as stable as a house of cards: if your free host decides to go the way of paid or (que horror!) shuts down altogether, your site and the countless hours spent on it could be down the drain. Hosting is an undeniably important element of your site, much like the foundation of a house. In real life, would you build your house on top of a fault line? Probably not.

The Question of Ownership: So, who owns your website, exactly? If you’re online with a free web host you’re likely using some sort of subdomain (freehosting.clickfire.com) or folder on the host’s site (www.clickfire.com/freehosting). This technically means you don’t actually “own” your URL or even the content on your site, if your host wants to play dirty. So what happens if you want to switch hosts? You risk losing your URL altogether which can cause a butterfly effect across all your other marketing efforts, just like changing the name of your business would in the real world. Some free hosts allow you to buy a premium, traditional domain name, but once you’re buying, you’re no longer talking about free web hosting…

The Bait and Switch: So you’ve found a great free hosting service and so far, everything’s working out exactly as planned. Then one day when you’re checking your email, between the eBay notifications and endless suggestions from Netflix, you find this (taken from an actual email received 1 year after signing up for a “free web hosting” service):

Dear Customer,

Your hosting account ‘xxxxx’ has expired on May 10, 2011. Currently, your website and e-mail addresses are not operational. To avoid further downtime, please renew the account.

To renew your account please follow these steps:

1. Login to your hosting Control Panel here:
RipYouOffFreeHosting.com/login.html

2. Click on the ‘Renew Plan’ link located in the upper left corner of the Control Panel (under Upgrades).

3. If you have added any additional service upgrades to your account, you can select which you’d like to renew as well.
After you complete these steps all you have to do is to proceed to the secured payment page. We accept multi-currency payments via two methods – credit/debit cards and PayPal.

If you have any questions regarding our service or if you need someone to help you with renewing your account or domain name, feel free to contact us by opening a new ticket inside the Control Panel (click Open New Ticket in the Help Center section).

Thank you for using our services!

Best Regards,
RipYouOffFreeHosting.com Team

It’s only then you remember that you didn’t actually read all the fine print and, wait, was there any fine print? Either way, your free web hosting service now has you in a stranglehold, pay up or get out. Since most people aren’t overly excited to give back the domain they’ve been working on for months or even years, hosting companies like this usually get what they want: money. And since you’re between a rock and a hard place, hosts know they can charge you a premium to keep your site running. Ever join one of those companies that offered “12 CDs for only one penny!” only to have a collection agency call when you didn’t buy 24 more at retail price? Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

There are a lot of things to consider when you’re choosing a hosting company for your website, particularly if you’re planning on running a business off the site. Though paid hosting can feel like a wasted expense, try to think of it in more tangible terms: do most retailers choose to rent out commercial space for a fee or do they simply set up shop at the nearest abandoned building? It’s important to remember that with paid hosting services, you’re getting more bang for your buck – the peach of mind knowing you actually own your site, additional bandwidth, site space and editing tools and most importantly, reliable customer service.

If you’re considering going the way of free web hosting, remember to vet your choice thoroughly. The longer a hosting service has been around, the better, but make sure you ask yourself: how is my free host making money? Odds are, you won’t be able to ride for free forever, so consider at what point you’re going to get dinged for some element of the service and decide if it’s worth the additional risk. Most site owners eventually determine that paying for web hosting is a necessary evil, much like Twitter and, you know, health insurance. The more you shell out for a competent web host now, the less you’re likely to have to pony up later.

6/19/11 – Heather Jean also contributed to this post.